<p>Huh? What on Earth is happening to this thread?</p>
<p>We need a strong Middle Class??? Who on Earth is trying to wipe out the Middle Class?</p>
<p>wis59 – it would seem that at least a large swathe of the Middle Class in your home state just voted somewhat contrary to your views.</p>
<p>Here we go again with ONE poster monopolizing the discussion and twisting and turning the thread.</p>
<p>^^ It degenerated very quickly.</p>
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<p>[Economy:</a> Will Middle Class America Ever See A Real Raise Again? - ABC News](<a href=“Will Middle Class America Ever See A Real Raise Again? - ABC News”>Will Middle Class America Ever See A Real Raise Again? - ABC News)</p>
<p>And you know…the OP of this thread asked a good question…I DO think the current students will be fine in the end. Too bad this discussion has gone off topic to one poster’s agenda…again. Too bad.</p>
<p>Back to Our Kids’ Future . . . I remember being utterly certain that we would all die very soon back in the 1980s of either one (1) nuclear annihilation, or (2) starvation from the population explosion.</p>
<p>Maybe the nuclear annihilation could still happen . . . but we’re much likelier to die from obesity related problems than starvation.</p>
<p>So maybe our kids will have brilliant futures!</p>
<p>[Amazon.com:</a> The Coming Generational Storm: What You Need to Know about America’s Economic Future (9780262112864): Laurence J. Kotlikoff, Scott Burns: Books](<a href=“http://www.amazon.com/Coming-Generational-Storm-Americas-Economic/dp/0262112868]Amazon.com:”>http://www.amazon.com/Coming-Generational-Storm-Americas-Economic/dp/0262112868)</p>
<p>Must read.</p>
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<p>[The</a> Future of the Middle Class - Derek Thompson - Business - The Atlantic](<a href=“The Future of the Middle Class - The Atlantic”>The Future of the Middle Class - The Atlantic)</p>
<p>I graduated from college in 1983, one of the worst job markets for graduates since the Great Depression. We managed. These graduates will as well.</p>
<p>Well then, we have nothing to discuss. Carry on.</p>
<p>I do predict yet another locked thread in the future, though.</p>
<p>I remember in sixth grade, back in 1974 or so, we really thought the Soviets were going to bomb us into oblivion. Then in 1986, when my husband and I both earned our master’s degrees in engineering, we sent out 273 resumes all over the country and got only a handful of responses, mostly NO. We had to move over 2,000 miles for jobs. Then in the late 80s, I can recall my father-in-law saying, “I just don’t see how kids your age are going to make it.” Well, 20 years later, we are doing just fine. I have faith that if young people study and work hard, they’ll do well. If they expect people to take care of them, though, they will be disappointed.</p>
<p>@IndianParent, btw, do you really believe there is no money to be made in retail? Interesting. You have a very narrow and uninformed view.</p>
<p>Back to the original question…I think EVERY generation has its challenges…and every generation seems to rally. I predict that this generation will be no exception to that.</p>
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<p>Not at all. There is definitely money to be made in retail.</p>
<p>No one knows how the future is going to turn out, and as others have pointed out there have been bad times in the past, the Great depression saw a lot of young people , many of them well educated, who ended up riding the rails and such, trying to find something. The US is facing a changed world, one where developing countries thanks to the Internet and large populations eager to work, and willing to work for little, have taken away a lot of jobs that were once what a lot of people did. In tech, Indians in particular have taken a lot of jobs in IT, because Indian schools turn out a lot of IT graduates and India hasn’t created new industries and jobs to employ them, so instead they have gone to work for non Indian compan ies (directly or through consulting firms) at wages that are a fraction of what workers would bring in and in many cases they are taking jobs entry level workers would get out of college (and before someone claims that isn’t true, I have worked in IT for 25 years, and especially in the financial industry, a lot of IT is either outsources to India, or when you go through the names of people working in the US, most of the names are of people from overseas, mostly India, Bengladesh and Pakistan with a smaller percentage Asians from elsewhere). </p>
<p>The key to the future? It is going to be finding new models, it won’t look like today, any more then today looks like 50 years or, or 100 years ago. My faith is in the US, we generally have a hard time changing, but when we do it tends to happen pretty fast. For example, the US when faced with the second world war, did so with an industrial base that had been decimated, and yet in a short time mobilized for war and built a logistics system practically from nothing and in a very short period of time. Among other things, it required doing things very differently then had been done, including designing production facilities that could use workers with very little training or experience). America tends to re-invent itself well, maybe because we change as a people, too, we aren’t bound in general by the past or rigid ideologies (I am not talking politics here, leave that out). We have accepted people from all over and done pretty darn well with that, and unlike the Chinese, for example, with their rigid, autocratic government that is often afraid of change and the future and does stupid things to control things (which doesn’t work well in the long run), we kind of tend to take things as they come (not saying easily, or without some squawking and kicking and trying to go back in time, but those people usually lose out).</p>
<p>Economic forces are also going to make things happen that will change things. Countries like China and India that basically are export only countries will only be able to do that a short time, you can’t do that and build up your own economy, and bankrupting a country that buys what you produce isn’t too smart (Japan is a pretty good example of that, they switched production to the US when they grew big enough, economically and otherwise it made sense to). Plus as wages and such eventually go up, companies find that manufacturing locally starts making more and more sense, between currency fluctuations and cost of shipping it can mean a lot (China will not for very long be able to get away with devaluing their currency to keep it at the same level versus the dollar). </p>
<p>The other factor is technological and I think in manufacturing it will give industrialized countries the advantage. Right now countries like China and often India are relying on swarms of low cost labor to do manufacturing, which works well to a certain point, and given that, those jobs would not easily come back to a developed country, not at those wage rates. The weakness is China basically has a lot of people that need jobs, so they are not likely to invest capital in things to produce things more efficiently, they need to keep as many people employed as possible, so their manufacturing is low tech and labor intensive. Industrialized countries, thanks to relatively ,low levels of population, can compete using modern manufacturing technology with quality and efficiency levels that low cost labor cannot compete with. </p>
<p>The only reason this hasn’t happened is because frankly of greed, companies see they can produce stuff cheaply using low wage workers without making the capital investment, and they jump at it (and then wonder why demand for their products drop as workers who used to make them get laid off)…but in the long run, I think even the most conservative politician knows that if we keep exporting jobs like that, they won’t be able to get away with blaming it on unions, environmentalists and regulation, and hopefully they don’t think a US with a relatively small number of high paid executives and elites and everyone else as serfs is a good thing…I also will add that having seen people from all over the world, they face some big limitations as well, despite all the claims about the superiority of workers from overseas, that is like claiming everyone in the US is a moron or a genius, it isn’t true, they have a lot of plodders, too, coming out of their schools. In any event, I still have faith in the US re-inventing itself, but it isn’t going to be easy, for any number of reasons. Still, I am with Churchill, who once observed that the US tends to end up doing the right thing, usually after trying everything else:)</p>
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<p>Maybe it is the end of the civilized world if most of the engineering jobs are military related. Oh, sorry, ‘defense’.</p>
<p>^^^^^^^^
"Welcome CGVet!</p>
<p>I am also an adult student though I am 33. </p>
<p>I jumped straight into the Army from HS and then jumped to nursing from the Army. Now I’m one semester deep into my BS in Computer Engineering.</p>
<p>I definitely feel out of place most of the time due to the age difference. I’ve minimized it though by networking with students that are also vets. At 25 I don’t think you’ll have many issues." xSlacker</p>
<p>There are plenty of non-military jobs for engineers.</p>
<p>Many of my friends who just graduated from the UC’s all have jobs. The thing they noted was that they were all doers while in college. They said their roommates who did nothing but go to school are having a harder time (parents gave them plenty of $$ to be lazy); those students also didn’t work as hard trying to find a job in the first place.</p>
<p>One got a job in finance ($70K) one in software engineering ($120K) and even an art major (digital design) ($60K). All of these kids came from middle class families. I wonder if there is a difference in job acquisition based on SES vs elite education. wasn’t the economy still pretty good when these current grads started in 2007 (can’t remember)?</p>
<p>I wonder if middle class students got a bigger push from their parents because these were the first ones to feel the pinch (not much FA)? Just wondering…</p>
<p>Wis75, well said.</p>