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Click to enlarge.
For what it is worth, I'm confident that we will make a "full recovery" during the next recession.
It was one helluva party though. Wasn't it?
Source Data:
St. Louis Fed: Custom Chart
Monday: New Home Sales
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Weekend:
• Schedule for Week of December 22, 2024
• Ten Economic Questions for 2025
Monday:
• At 8:30 AM ET,*Chicago Fed National Activity Index* for Novem...
12 hours ago
4 comments:
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=vYh
black is CNP16OV, blue is using 15-64 instead.
Red is the difference i.e. age 65+ less 15 YOs, right axis.
Troy,
Just look at that red line curl. It's like a flowering plant seeking out the "son" for nourishment.
The "son" is saddled with student loan debt that in many cases may only provide a restaurant job though. :(
Not that there's anything inherently wrong with a restaurant job of course. I had one once. Didn't pay well though. Let's just say I wasn't looking to buy my first home at the time.
yeah, I look at all the retail McJobs around me and wonder what these people are going to be doing in 20-30 years.
My life was on autopilot coming out of HS in the 1980s, I liked programming and it seemed to be a growth industry so I applied for that, plus college tuition was $40/week (!) so why the hell not.
I didn't understand how the world was structured then, my parents and high school were no great help in explaining wealth, economics, etc.
I only started putting the pieces together in my 40s, alas.
I remember when I got the college catalog, leafing through the various degree programs, trying to convince myself I was giving them all a fair hearing.
Architecture was attractive, but I sensed competition for gigs was insane -- at best most people only buy one newly-architected house in their life, so selling new building designs seemed to be a tough line of work, and corporate architecture didn't seem all that inspiring to me.
Likewise, retail suffers from scaling for its employees. People working on a sales floor can only add value to the extent they move product off said floor, and this is a pretty linear function.
Same thing with teaching, though class size at least means you can pull a $60,000 salary from 30 rug rats @ $2000 apiece.
Healthcare has the labor scaling issue, but providers have guilded up to limit competition and that's working for them, always has.
Software, along with media in general, is the one magical wildcard, wealth-creation that scales beyond the initial investment of labor.
You discovered that with MTG investment. Music, same thing.
I only sensed this in the 1980s, how the ziplock bag software market was productizing fun, and that seemed pretty cool.
The Indie boom of the past 5+ years caught me by surprise, but I was expecting it, sorta:
http://www.metafilter.com/54404/Return-of-the-Amiga-500
is a post of mine from 2006.
Though if I had to do it over now, I'd have gone into the enlisted military, Chair Force or Navy.
Done my 20+ years, 1985-2005. Be out with a decent pension already. That's what my grandad did, he spent the last 10+ years renting an apartment in Centralia, fishing and drinking.
Troy,
My life was on autopilot coming out of HS in the 1980s, I liked programming and it seemed to be a growth industry so I applied for that, plus college tuition was $40/week (!) so why the hell not.
My life was on autopilot too. I was fortunate that our high school got its first computer (TRS-80) just two weeks before I graduated. It was kept in the math room and I was apparently the only one very interested in it. That pretty much sealed my fate.
The timing couldn't have been better. Shortly thereafter, I convinced my parents to get me one of my own. It gave me the summer to play around on it before entering college.
I was thinking physics until that point, then I opted for computer science. In the end, I sort of went back to physics though. I spent an additional year in college to get a physics degree (to go with my computer science degree). I never regretted that decision. It definitely helped me get a job at a computer game company (and as a gamer, that became my primary career of interest).
Though if I had to do it over now, I'd have gone into the enlisted military, Chair Force or Navy.
After I burned out at my job, I often wondered if I wouldn't have enjoyed that career better. I would have opted for Navy (my dad served on a battleship in WW2) and I've always liked being around the water.
I would have enjoyed the structure I think. I'm not sure how much I would have enjoyed giving up the freedom/control though. Hard to say. It's not like I had all that much freedom in the end days at my former company. It became a hell hole. That said, I did have the freedom to quit thank goodness!
I think the best decision one could possibly make is to simply pick a career that makes them happy. That was my intent and for quite a few years it worked out great. It's not really a job if you enjoy what you're doing.
If I had it all to do over again, I don't think I'd pick a desk job though. There was too much sitting and that eventually got old. Further, there came a time when I really wanted to use my hands for more than just typing. You know?
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