> He and his cohort had to decide which health-insurance plan to choose, how much of his salary to devote to saving for retirement and other financial details. “Every one of us went out into the hallway and called our parents,” he admits. “We were graduates of really elite schools, and we still didn’t know what to do.”
That’s not because you are a child or an idiot. It’s because you know your parents have EXPERIENCE, and that is something you will never acquire from a course.
My parents had a defined benefit (final salary) pension organized by their employer, of the kind that no longer exists. They didn't have to choose how much to save. My father knows how to fix 1980s era cars, but 2020s cars have software that makes them impossible for anyone except a dealer to fix (or even for the dealer in some cases).
The world changes so parental advice may need some adaptation, but the general idea is that they show their child when they make decisions. This may have been more about what job they took for what pension it came with and what car they bought for which labor price and now it is which car to never buy.
This kind of thread bothers me with it's hand wringing. Parents and teachers often spoke of their lives in casual conversation when I was growing up and it was pretty clear to me that, aside from it being a response to having no adult around to make a more useful conversation with for them, there was an element of educational intent.
I find experience to be a bad explanation here, because a course can absolutely teach you all these things that are discussed in the article.
Sewing? The course will explain and show you, after which you gain experience by practice.
Making financial decisions? This rests a lot on knowing facts about how financials work, and a course is absolutely one correct way of learning those.
For experience, I'd rather think of things like - how do you cope with the death of a loved one? How do you decide who to be or what to do? How do you manage your emotions, streghts and weaknesses?
It's also because making some of these decisions (choosing health insurance, deciding how much to save, etc.) involve two considerations---the first being purely analytic (mundane cost vs. probability of contracting major disease vs. cost of catastrophe) and the other being necessarily extra-analytic (how risk averse the individual is).
One can objectively reason through the first set of considerations, while the second involves a subjective element and is likely heavily influenced by their upbringing and life experiences.
Nobody knows how much to save or how much to spend on insurance. It's completely reasonable to seek advice, and one's parents might be a great starting point.
Not to mention the (now experienced) graduates of really elite schools on the other side of the adversarial relationship, working for those financial institutions.
Your parents have had one shot at deciding how to save for retirement, at one time. They've had an extremely limited number of shots at choosing health plans. Maybe they have a couple of friends with weird, memorable stories about those things... probably memorable because they're outliers.
Their experience is approximately useless.
... whereas there's a huge amount of well-supported expert advice out there. You don't even need to take a course. Search the damned Internet.
... and don't give me any "cocky youth" bullshit. I'm old enough to be the parent of a large fraction of people on Hacker News.
As someone who worked public-facing jobs for a long time, I can assure you that millennials are not any more clueless than previous generations. They have more self-awareness about what they don’t know and are more willing to joke about it (“adulting”) or ask for help (calling family members), whereas previous generations tend to handle something they don’t understand by faking it or getting mad at the person asking the question.
I've been thinking about this a lot in the context of moving out of an old house that needs constant care.
Will the next residents understand that the drip-watering system 'blows out' sometimes, and needs fixing? How did I understand that? I've never lived in a house with a drip-watering system. But I heard these noises (high-pitched weeeeeee! as the air gets pushed out of the line; sound of water through pipes even though I hadn't turned a tap on), I wondered what it was, I investigated, I figured out it was the watering system.
And then one day those noises changed. Interesting. Investigate! Oh, one of the connectors has come loose. I should fix that.
Next year, the drip-watering system just doesn't work. Nothing happens. I remember when it turned on I could hear the solenoid tapping in and out. Now, nothing. A bit of figuring out later and I realise it froze in winter. The tap was full of water, it closed its relay, night came, it froze, it expanded. Damn. I bought a new unit and now I drain it come late autumn.
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This plus one hundred other things.
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So can I tell all this to the incoming residents, whomever they might be? I thought to write a 'house manual'. Maybe knock up a little website.
But, no. I can't. Because this is what we refer to as 'common sense'. Can I teach a stranger common sense? Alas.
Invent a thing that can teach an adult common sense and there's your next unicorn.
> I thought to write a 'house manual'. Maybe knock up a little website.
> But, no. I can't. Because this is what we refer to as 'common sense'. Can I teach a stranger common sense?
Those hidden details about the house aren't really common sense. You know because you either set it up or had to figure it out.
I have started writing a house manual because I've owned this house since before it was built and there are a lot of little details I know (like what's inside walls where and why, where buried pipes and utilities are, etc) that would take a lot of trial and error for someone else to figure out.
My parents are real estate agents and have seen this a handful of times. The buyers are always very appreciative. In fact, their house came with a plastic bin with filing folders containing manuals/warrantees/etc for stuff in the house (Fridge, Oven, Dishwasher, Pool stuff, etc).
I’ve not gone that far but I have a rough floor plan with the circuit breaker noted for each switch and most lights. Also a 3D version I built of the house in a cad-type app. I’d happily give it (and info about the smart home devices, like switches) to the next owner but I have a feeling it would be mostly useless.
I think there's a personality type for old/high maintenance houses.
Having said that, a first time buyer will always be a first time buyer, and a house will probably suffer initially whilst they learn the skills to support their purchase.
This is what makes old houses a thing though: they're tough and built to tolerate a certain amount of stupidity - they wouldn't still be standing otherwise.
I try to take notes about things I do to my old house that I don't hear my peers with newer houses talk about, and if I do sell this house, I probably would offer to share all the notes when the buyer picks up the keys. Notes are also beneficial for my partner and future me.
How do you make the jump from “I got bitten by this gotcha” to “can’t teach common sense”? Seems like you made the leap from not knowing to knowing alright.
I got a few old school binders with the house, and it's been a life saver. It's sorted by room, and all sorts of useful things are in there: Exact model number of the water heater. Wiring diagrams of the garage and cellar. Location of the master water valve. The ___location of the tool to reach inside the ventilation ducts. Where the stones are dug in the garden. How water flows when there is flooding. How to replace filters in the rain spouts. The garden roof may take damage from heavy snowfall, but that the incline of the garage roof is enough.
I am extremely grateful for this binder and try to keep it updated for the next owner. It seems a bit elitist to call it common sense. Sure, it's a house, everything can be repaired. But it's good to know why things are built the way they are. And it is much more useful to find out that the watering system needs to be drained late autumn before the fact.
> Usually articles like this are a form of narrative shaping for profitable social problems caused by corporations
True. In this case, it's not difficult to imagine that someone who wants to sell "adulting classes" would get some PR help to drum up awareness for their product.
> "Lots of people get (very profitably) mired in debt" -> ban usury which would be unprofitable but net positive for society
You haven't thought this through. "Usury" is easy to get angry at, but to actually ban it, one would need to set limits on interest rates and fees, and lenders would need to start rejecting far greater numbers of poor/risky borrowers to stay compliant.
It's sort of like putting limits on insurance rates. It sounds like a great pro-consumer move. But the second order effects can be terrible, as evidenced by taxpayers needing to bail out insurance companies after the recent LA fires. See https://calmatters.org/economy/2025/03/proposed-fixes-for-ca...
Media is a self-reinforcing system that generates acceptable narratives for a set of consumers. Unfortunately, it is not a context for working out effective public policy (that'd be nice though).
pydry commented that The Economist is "is Rothschild owned", which is partially true but quite misleading. The Rothschilds are minority owners, but other investors have much more control over the company than they do.
avshalom seems to have interpreted that as anti-Semitic. For what it's worth, I also interpreted the comment that way at first, but I think that it's best to assume good intent here, so in that spirit I would say that pydry probably just meant it to represent rich people rather than Jews.
Thanks, I wasn't aware of the Jewish/antisemitic angle at all, but that's my own ignorance in that area.
The "represents rich people" angle was the only interpretation I could see. Still not sure I fully understand why the conversation has gone in the Jewish/antisemite direction though, but again this is a topic I choose to remain ignorant on.
Well yeah, the baffling leap from "young adults are having a hard time navigating life" to "the real problem is interest bearing loans but they won't let us talk about that" is the other clue that pydry is a nazi.
Indeed. This was the only interpretation intended. Anti semitism, like all racism, is a scourge on humanity.
The rothschilds are not representative of jews theyre a representative of rich capitalists.
Some people (usually rather extreme racists who support/deny the ongoing genocide in gaza) see anti semitism everywhere, especially where it doesnt exist, however.
These people's rather extreme racism has become increasingly bold and obvious in recent times and almost always comes dressed up in faux concern for anti semitism.
This was not about what I'd hoped it would be. Things like: how to realize when you do or do not have sufficient knowledge about something, or how to distinguish bs from non-bs, or how to recognizing when you really need to have situational awareness, or how to maintain proper perspective on things, how to keep calm and when not to, etc.
The skills they mention in the article, budgeting and rejection and so forth, are also important. But there is a layer under that too.
Not sure about specific ones here... But I feel financial basics should be a mandatory course before graduation... Maybe it is available as electives in other counties but here in India, fresh graduates are shockingly illiterate financially... Things to cover
>They are shrinking from responsibilities such as marriage, homeowning and child-rearing because “adulting is hard”, as one of his students put it. Western culture, Mr Hayward wrote, indulges childish fancies.
Shrinking as in they are already homeowners and married with children, but not rising to the responsibility of it? Or shrinking as in not becoming a home owner, or getting married, or having children. If its the latter, could there possibly be some other explanation?
>there has been a generational shift and that young people are less mature than their forebears were at the same age.
I assure you that taking care of a family does not make you independent. Regardless of who the family member to care about is. I am quite pro "you should be helping family" and as such I am fully aware that caregivers are giving up quite a lot. And in particular, having kids makes you much more dependent and limited then whatever was your life before them. That goes for those who stayed at home and depend on partner for everything, those who are primary breadwinner focusing on work only and for those who juggle childcare with work.
As for owning property instead of renting, that one is massively more influenced by whether you can afford to buy a property or rent. Renting requires much less money and that is all there is to it. Neither makes you more or less satisfied in life.
Yeah might be clueless but many of the how to topics are a youtube video away. I research before I do something and after that I can decide if I will touch it or not.
I'm from EU, the situation of the whole population of circa ANY age is the very same: most do not know NOTHING about common life things. I start to see young who do not want to learn how to drive a car "because we have the metro", re-read not to OWN a car, but just knowing how to drive. Shoelaces start to disappear for crappy tourniquets because many do not know how to tie laces and no, such tourniquets are not quicker not better. It's not a positive evolution like from an ICE to and EV. Many do not know how to cook most basic dishes, they live buying ready-made food and so on.
It's not better in generic culture: many do not know how to handle paper and write with a pen which is REASONABLE these days IF you know how to write on a computer and handle your files properly but no, that second part is not known as well. I know some PhDs who do not know how to manage their own info, even their libraries in Zotero and can't properly quote a damn email.
They seem to be the ones who pride themselves on being independent, real adults, salt of the earth and look down on supposedly overly dependent young people.
Relatively speaking, perhaps, but things really have progressed by several orders of magnitude. When I was young we had access to very little "technology". (Maybe that's why people tended to be somewhat more down-to-earth?) I could change a tire by the age of ten, not to mention being fairly well-versed in a number of subjects. And I was certainly not the exception. Any given person was bound to be proficient at *something*. Younger folks these days however (on average) don't seem to think very deeply about things (probably too many distractions?) and as a result they can be surprisingly ignorant across the spectrum. Not all of them, of course, just an alarmingly high percentage....
I'm old enough that grocery stores had tube testers in them. Vacuum tubes are technology. So are canned goods, and milled flour, and white sugar, and refrigeration.
My grandfather's shop included a lathe and welding torch. He and my dad swapped out the engine to a car in my Dad's carport. That's technology - the car, the tools to fix it, and parts supply system to make it possible.
My mother had an automatic sewing machine which she used to make clothes. Sewing machines, motorized sewing machines, the looms to make the cloth, the machines to process the cotton - all technology.
We had several hams in the neighborhood, and CB radios were a craze. That's technology.
We got the city newspaper, which was possible from centuries of technological development - the printing press, ink and paper production, typesetting machines, distribution, vending machines.
Most homes had a particle accelerator in them to watch TV. That's certainly technology.
Compare a home now to one made two generations ago, and little has changed - assuming you are lucky enough to avoid the inherent death cycle of products tied to a smartphone. You've got easier access to shows and music, but people in the 1970s still had TV, radio, records, etc.
Compare a home from 1925 to two generations before that, and there you'll see a whole lot more changed.
Electricity is technology. Running water is technology. Municipal sewage is technology. Telephony is technology. Cheap aluminum is technology. Gasoline is technology. Weather forecasting is technology. The vertical filing system is technology. A card catalog is technology. Punched cards is technology.
You had access to a lot of technology when you were young. Why do you dismiss it so?
Sure. My mention of "printing press" was specifically meant to be moveable type, but that detail doesn't matter.
Now how do you get from your true observation to characterize how technology now is 'several orders of magnitude' greater than the 'very little "technology"' af3d had as kid?
When you talk about "demands it places on our lives", do you mean modern life has higher demands, or lower? And is that a good thing?
Like, in the 1800s, employees worked 12 hour shifts, 6 days/week, with few rest days or holidays. Working conditions were horrible, and a simple slip in attention could cut your fingers off or worse.
"Before capitalism, most people did not work very long hours at all. The tempo of life was slow, even leisurely; the pace of work relaxed. Our ancestors may not have been rich, but they had an abundance of leisure. When capitalism raised their incomes, it also took away their time. Indeed, there is good reason to believe that working hours in the mid-nineteenth century constitute the most prodigious work effort in the entire history of humankind."
My mother would make clothes for the family when I was a kid. Sewing is a complex skill which takes effort and time to learn. She stopped when the price of cloth got more expensive than the price of pre-made clothing. Does technology place fewer demands on our lives now?
And how do you factor in the lack of effort we should have been doing to avoid global warming - a problem we've known about since I was a teenager in the 1980s?
I said life during 1800s high tech was more demanding on people than now, but I also said that life in the Middle Ages was less demanding on us than now.
Which makes it decidedly difficult to see a simple correlation between technology and ease of life, no matter how many "orders of magnitude" technology has changed.
That depends how you count. If you think of a generation as 20 years then that's the 80's which were fairly complex. If you think of it in terms of 'my grandparents life', well in many cases that was a lot simpler. Mine were born in the 1890's/1900s
The Economist article compares young adults now from those of two generations previous to the young adults of now. I'm using 1970s - 25 years per generation.
The 1890s were a tumultuous time. You now had cities with a nightlife, because the arc light and other new technologies meant you no longer depended on candles. Photography and telegraphy was now decades old - by the 1880s news could travel around the world within hours. This fueled the presses, powered by Linotype machines that could churn out pages with ease.
Telephony was now available in homes. The first X-ray was 1895. Hollerith's tabulating machine completed the 1890 census in only six years - two years less than the 1880 census - and transformed information processing.
Astronomy was making exciting new discovery, polar explorers were getting closer to the poles. Steam engines were getting ever more powerful. The Turbinia - the first turbine-powered steamship, 1894 - upset old ideas on ship power.
The chemical industry, with Germans in the lead, created amazing new products. Bayer produced Aspirin in the late 1890, and the new synthetic colors transformed the Victorian era.
This article is basically a showcase of why one shouldn't take sociology seriously. Thin ideological concepts packaged in a veneer of scientific sounding terminology, performed as an exercise to basically only allow the ideological in-group to "understand" it. The entire field seems like an elaborate suppression technique against the ideological outgroup (and apparently quite a successful one at that.
Meanwhile sociology was hardest hit by the replication crisis and I see no sign that they have done anything to improve replicability of their "research"
Do you have some sources for Sociology being hit harder than, say, Psychology, in the replication crisis? I personally don't even know of a many labs replication attempt from them (Sociology). So we probably don't know.
That said, Sociology is the attempt to explain the most complex thing in the universe (collective behavior arising out of sentient individuals), so if you think there's a better way, I'd be extremely excited :)
It’s not often that I diss content, but if there was ever a summary of a topic written that tried to sound like it was a novel idea by labelling everything under the sun, this is it.
Maybe I’m not smart enough to understand it, but honestly after 4 tries I still don’t get what the point is.
Also, the topic of “reflexive” came about in the early to mid 20th century, so for many people here, our parents have always existed in this reflexive modern. That doesn’t mean things have gotten more complex in the last generation
I see it as a drawback of a poorly structured society that one has to know these topics at all. In in ideal society, money would manage itself, people wouldn't have to dress differently for an interview, and shirts wouldn't tear or need ironing. Those with such skills have been strongly conditioned into thinking that their skills are the only way, when in reality they are the ones holding us back.
God this publication is so over its head its absurd.
The fact that they have shifted from talking about economics to telling us about skills we should have or which countries the "free world" deems democratic enough this week is unimpressive.
This publication is nothing more than a pedestal to launch assaults on the average citizen.
They expect average Joe to decide about his health insurance plan? Joe is not aware of half his bodily functions let alone make decisions based on assumptions of what might happen to him 40 years down the road. And he has to be an expert in litigation as well because you can bet the insurance company is going to fight him in every way.
The fact that people are forced to transact is despicable.
I am a firm believer that libertarian content must be outright banned in this platform with a ___domain ban certain publications this one being the first.
>Compared with other countries, adults in America spend less time doing household chores such as mopping and ironing;
I definitely noticed this with exchange students from the US a little more than a decade ago in uni. In Germany it's pretty common for 18 year old's to share an apartment in the city with one or two mates, you wash, you cook together, the drinking age is 16 etc.
When we interacted with US students, a lot of them even a bit older got wasted like teens and threw up everywhere, couldn't operate a washing machine, couldn't cook a normal homemade meal and so on. I think the US college experience has a lot to do with this. Over here you live on your own and it's like a job, nobody cares if you show up, apparently in the US it's like an adult daycare almost. No wonder people in their mid 20s can't do chores.
"They are shrinking from responsibilities such as marriage, homeowning and child-rearing because “adulting is hard”, as one of his students put it. Western culture, Mr Hayward wrote, indulges childish fancies."
Yes, it is surely that young people are just wusses and not that they're also much poorer than previous generations, which forces them to postpone things like marriage, child-rearing, and purchasing a home.
Instead of 'pampered' i think the word should be 'neglected'. Some older people tend to use words like pampered to give the sense that the young people had it "too good" so now they deserve to suffer by not being independent, but that is rarely the case. There is nothing pleasant about a childhood spent in front of screens that leaves one anxious and lacking independence.
