Some Saturday Sociology

The Times reports on twenty-somethings and their delayed transition to adulthood:

We’re in the thick of what one sociologist calls “the changing timetable for adulthood.” Sociologists traditionally define the “transition to adulthood” as marked by five milestones: completing school, leaving home, becoming financially independent, marrying and having a child. In 1960, 77 percent of women and 65 percent of men had, by the time they reached 30, passed all five milestones. Among 30-year-olds in 2000, according to data from the United States Census Bureau, fewer than half of the women and one-third of the men had done so. A Canadian study reported that a typical 30-year-old in 2001 had completed the same number of milestones as a 25-year-old in the early ’70s.

Nothing about foul-ball etiquette.

AND WHILE ON THE TOPIC... Proper foul ball (and home run!) etiquette should not include beating down granny (Aug 18, Yankees 9 Tigers 5).

Comments

[Barry Dauphin]

The second foul ball video clip also included a bit on Roger Clemens' woes. Where is Roger in the transition to adulthood.?

[Jack is Back!]

I know of two retired couples in our gated community who have twenty-somethings still living at home after graduating from college. I left home at 17 for university and never returned except to visit. But this seems to indicate that our dependency nation is infiltrating normal family life. Not good.

[MaryW]

The proper way to catch a foul ball can be found at Powerline.

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2010/08/027046.php

LUN

[Chubby]

(( A Canadian study reported that a typical 30-year-old in 2001 had completed the same number of milestones as a 25-year-old in the early ’70s. ))

I wonder if it is related to monetary inflation. 50 years ago someone on a $30K salary could afford a house, a stay at home wife, kids, a station wagon, yearly vacations. That is hard to achieve on $100K salary these days.

[Danube of Thought]

The dude in the Powerline clip is the coolest guy I've seen in a while.

[Danube of Thought]

According to the CPI Inflation calculator, $30,000 in 1960 was equivalent to $220, 957.09 today.

[MarkO]

The guy in the clip is the nephew of the Most Interesting Man in the World.

[Chubby]

I wonder what $34K in today's dollars would have bought back then ... $34K is the median starting salary for school teachers. I doubt it would buy the things I listed in my post, and yet single wage earning school teachers back then could afford all those things. I think a lot of kids postpone important life commitments for financial reasons; it appears that in some sectors, wages have not kept pace with inflation.

[Thomas Collins]

If prog taxation, regulation and public spending policies are not undone, the ability of twentysomethings to launch will become more and more constricted (except for the twentysomethings from Ruling Class families).

[Thomas Collins]

Well, here is a twenty year old woman who can't be tweaked for failure to launch. Unfortunately, the "launch" was into a state trooper's car. Both drivers survived (at least she was going slowly). See LUN.

[Chubby]

Thomas, the sad thing is, far too many of the maleducated "youth vote" thinks capitalism is the problem, and more government is the solution. If they keep putting big spending statists into office, they will have to learn the hard way.

[Manuel Transmission]

Chubby,
As a reference point, I got the second highest starting salary from my engineering school graduating class in 1970 @ $10K. We bought one of the larger tract houses in the neighborhood (built new for us) within about a year for $25K. Life was good!

I think starting salaries for engineers are 6-7 times higher now, but $150K wouldn't get you much of a house unless it was in a BK depressed area, in guessing.

[(Another) Barbara]

You must be a youngster, Chubby (although compared to me everyone is, alas). Fifty years ago my husband was an airline pilot, aged 30, earning a "good" wage, which was just under $14,000 per annum. I didn't work, we had two babies (with a third to come) and were buying our first house (in Hawaii, where real estate and food were even then significantly more expensive than on the mainland). We would have considered that $30K per year was a rich man's income. Course no one had the expectations of owning the things people have now. We had one old car, very little furniture, no TV and almost never ate out. But that's the way others lived too so it seemed fine. Families could still get by on one income, seems to me, but they'd have to be content with far fewer possessions and privileges.

[Ari Tai]

Be good to find a report on success and failures of the 18-26 year-olds returning from the war-zones and leaving the service. I suspect they leave as children and return as adults, more likely than not self-sufficient, freedom-loving citizens.

Interesting election just happened in Oz (where I've worked / vacationed since July). I've been talking to a number of (blue collar) tradespeople harvesting minerals and energy in Western Australia. They are surprisingly young, many appear to have left high-school at the end of their sophomore year and are now in their late teens, early 20s, building a nest-egg, starting a family. Some are saving to continue their education - which was not what they expected to do when they left high-school early, more a case of learning they can make a good living with their hands but they’d like to try the same thing with their heads.. and the hard work has tempered and matured them physically and mentally. Most are voting Liberal (the local party of liberty and self-responsibility, as opposed to "Labor" - the party of the socialists & past communists & the nanny state), and are fairly libertarian in outlook. Even as most are members of Unions.

They are appropriately skeptical of big business, but they blame government corruption and arm-twisting (not their bosses) for making tax deals (that would hurt their competitors more than they). And they think the AGW alarmists and those that would tax carbon will impoverish them, their families and their children’s children.

My guess is the U.S. youngsters (who have not served) will not (ever) be so clear-headed.

I fear for my country. But maybe the quarter-million-plus youngsters who risked their lives will save us - again.

[matt]

spent the morning with some of the 1/1 Marines who were washing cars to raise money for their Battalion Ball. They are kids much the way many of us were back in the day.

Remember, there is always a massive divide between the enabled and those who have to work for a living. The reality is that we have expanded the enabled class to include most people entering their productive years. Government has bought off even the middle class with their bailouts.

Seeing the California RE market up close, it is scary the number of people using strategic defaults to erase hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt. It is, as far as I'm concerned, criminal.

I sat down with a close friend who tracks all of the major markets, and we analyzed the CDO and CDS markets as they stand today. He has a program that calls up every single instrument on Wall Street.

There were 7 pages, single spaced, of these instruments with their ratings, the default rates on the loans and tranches contained therein, etc. The total was in the several trillions of dollars. The default rates were on average in the 40-70% range.

What's more is that these things are so messed up they will take the full 30-40 years until the last positions in each of these are resolved to figure out.It is truly a Pandora's Box.

This makes Japan's "Lost Decade" look like the gogo 90's.

[Rick Ballard]

"It is, as far as I'm concerned, criminal."

Matt,

It's not illegal though, is it? It's unethical and immoral but where does it sit on a scale that encompasses maintaining zombies such as Govmo or Citi or AIG at taxpayer expense? Where does it sit on a scale which protects the villainy and larceny practiced by the great Whorehouses of Wall Street?

If Fuld, Dimon and Blankfein were sharing a cell with Madoff, I could summon some outrage over the strategic defaulters but they are still feted for "brilliance" as they rattle their tin cups to be refilled with taxpayers largesse.

On the brighter side - the "strategic defaulters" are proving the existence and importance of moral hazard at the same time that reality is providing extraordinary proof regarding the inherent idiocy underlying the practice of pseudo-Keynesian economics.