go read a book instead

New Wave Series/ Eclipse Woman, Masami teraoka 1992

(Source: extremelyzen)

strugglingtobeheard:

genderbitch:

masksarehot:

gaobibaituo:

awesome-everyday:

shorterexcerpts:

thecallus:

theatlantic:

The Cheapest Generation: Why Aren’t Millennials Buying Cars or Houses?

What if Millennials’ aversion to car-buying isn’t a temporary side effect of the recession, but part of a permanent generational shift in tastes and spending habits? It’s a question that applies not only to cars, but to several other traditional categories of big spending—most notably, housing. And its answer has large implications for the future shape of the economy—and for the speed of recovery.

Read more. [Image: Kagan McLeod]

It’s safe to say that a decent number of Tumblr users are a part of the Millennial generation. So, tell us: Do you own a car or house? If not, why?

IT’S BECAUSE THEY HAVE NO DISPOSABLE INCOME YOU THUNDERING IDIOTS. Fucking preference has nothing to do with it. 50% of college graduates have no job! They all have the most student loan debt ever! What are you asking this question for?!

Also: housing is a good bit more expensive now.

My parents got a 15-year mortgage on a new house in the mid-70s. The house was $32,000. Average home price in that area now? $190,000.

So, home prices went up. Food prices went up. Health care prices went WAY UP. Rent prices went up. Higher education went up so damn high that some of us forgo that all together. Energy prices went up. Car prices went up.

Prices of prices went up.

We also pay cell phone bills, internet bills, data plans, text plans, online subscriptions, cable/satellite tv, netflix, DVR subscriptions — bills that didn’t even exist 30-40 years ago. We also use computers and smartphones and microwaves and other consumer electronics that didn’t exist 20-50 years ago.

We need medications and doctors and contact lenses and tampons and maxi pads and other things that cost money just to be alive and keep us healthy.

Most of us can’t afford to:

1. Get married and have a “Traditional” big wedding
2. Buy a house
3. Buy a new car
4. PLAN to have children
5. Take two, consecutive weeks of vacation.

Jobs that paid 50k in the late 1990s now pay between 30-35. Interest rates that favor consumers have gone down.

So I say, no. We are not choosing not to buy homes. We’re not choosing to take the bus in cities where there’s no good public transit. WE ARE NOT CHOOSING TO LIVE WHAT SOCIETY DEEMS AS AN UNDESIRABLE LIFESTYLE.

Don’t even get me started on the fact that these two people in the picture are young white hipsters. Young black and brown folks have been forgoing homeownership and buying new cars for decades, this shit isn’t new, pal. You’re just acting like this shit is new because it’s hitting white folks.

anyway, my point is: We are fucking broke.

 fuck all these articles written by assholes who actually know nothing about our generation

FUCK THEM

FUCK
THEM

I’m either Gen X or Millennial, depending which dates you use, and so I’m old enough to have been living on my own as a lot of this started spinning out of control. It was like watching a trainwreck. The current state of all of this is ridiculous. I was going to go on a long rant about Boomers refusing to age gracefully, the impact of 9/11, the double-edged sword that is globalization, and our current loan culture and confusion of “needs vs. wants” that has been bred into us by clever marketing, but I’m too angry, and it was getting too long.

So I’ll just say this: the system is seriously out of whack, and we’re in this strange place where we’re both trapped in bubbles and depressions at the same.

I keep waiting for market corrections that just don’t seem to be happening.

And also, I’ll just throw up Crack Shack or Vancouver Mansion for reference. And if you visit it, bear in mind that this is in a city where the AVERAGE HOUSEHOLD INCOME is $46K. FORTY-SIX THOUSAND A YEAR. Oh, yeah, the system isn’t broken at all…damn those cheap fucking Millennials & Gen-X-ers!

Is every dipshit who writes these articles a rich sheltered moron? Cuz if I had fucking money I would buy those things.

I DON’T HAVE FUCKING MONEY.

Lol convicted felons don’t get shit. Home ownership? I can’t even get a job I’m qualified for. And your generation wanted it that way. You paid for your homes and cars by redlining us, by allowing lenders to not give us access to lines of credit for being Black. By making your homes and suburbs “safe” by allowing Nixon and Reagan and Clinton and bush and now Obama to lock us up, to fight a war on drugs against the same people you enslaved and then gave nothing to. My family before me didnt own a home because of you you white fucks. While you drink and get high and abuse your wives and children in your suburbs you also lynched economically tortured and continued genocide via policy and white supremacy. Sent police on us and prevented us from organizing or locking us up for organizing. Us Black American millennials are the children of civil rights activists and parents alive during segregation and busing and all kinds of shit. You didn’t allow them to accrue wealth. Add all the economic shit everyone discussed above and why the fuck would I be buying a home? With what? Even if I earn the money I can get screened and denied. It’s not like the whole housing crash was because white bankers preyed on my people and other people of color with subprime loans. It’s not like we still don’t experience housing discrimination. Redlining and the benefits white soldiers but not Black soldiers got after WW1 and WWII, that never fucking happened.

I love how journals like this can have writers like teju and also dipfucks like this

you’re the people who told us we could be anything we wanted to be since: that the internet has made (like 4 or 5) young people wealthy, now that there’s a black president, now that everyone’s going to college, etc.

those of us that started off believing those lies stopped believing them years ago. the atlantic et al still seem to think we can be anything we want to be. we can’t. wake the fuck up.

also <3 teju cole too but no one else at the atlantic probably