"let go" the notion of individual freedom, and replace it with your parents having control via financing over your life for most of it. Yeah I'll pass. Alternative proposal - vote for parties who will reverse intergenerational inequality: reform the housing market, dispose of the (corporate and literal property) rentiers, introduce a wealth tax, equalise pensions (it's insane that one generation is going to get pensions and the next basically isn't).
"Let go of the idea that you can live as an independent human" have a word with yourself.
>Let go of the idea that you can live as an independent human" have a word with yourself.
I assume your family has a couple generations of America under their belt? If so, I'm not surprised you find the statement your op to taste bad. It's fundamentally opposed to the American value system (though as this article indicates, at odds with the reality of America today).
Are they wrong? If you had time to apply for colleges because you had housing in high school and didn't have to work all day to pay for food and housing, are you truly independent? If you didn't have to fetch your own water every morning and hunt your food? Maybe you think I'm taking the argument too far, but I see where they are coming from. True "freedom" is a bit of a myth, and shouldn't it be? Do you want to be the sole party responsible for ensuring your medicine isn't laced with arsenic?
In any case, other cultures have taken on the idea of familial responsibility and wealth to great success by their own measures. Just because it is different, doesn't mean it's bad.
I'm not even American, and for the record I got a couple of K a year at uni which I'd have survive without and never a dime since. Having to live under the control of your parents (which is fundamentally what happens when they hold the purse strings) past the age of 18-21 depending on taste is messed up. I know plenty of people from both camps and it's definitely bad for you to have your parents controlling your life past 21. It's different when you're younger, but even that is painful - at 15 I was ready to operate independently and my parents having some control over me until 18 probably messed up our relationship a lot. Not everything which is cultural is also arbitrary, as humanity advances we tend to promote individual freedom to the maximum extent we can support (and this is coming from a lefty). This isn't even bringing it how it will perpetuate class-systems, even for the beneficiaries I think it's incredibly harmful.
> couple of K a year at uni which I'd have survive without and never a dime since
And tuition ?
> your parents controlling your life past 21.
I think you have some kind of archaic idea of what parents supporting their child looks like. My parents let me pursue my dream (tbf conveniently it was in STEM) and funded my undergrad and masters.
It cost them their life's savings, but it comes with an understanding that I will support my brother's education and we will support them in retirement.
I've been away from home for 8 years at this point, and I can't think of any major restriction on me, as a result of being financially dependent on my parents.
As a family, it is a win-win. My parents get a better retirement through me, both me and my brother can get educated debt free and if anything goes wrong, it would delay our plans but won't destroy us financially the way a $100k loan would. (my parents' annual income is ~12k)
> at 15 I was ready to operate independently
If you still believe that, you might have some maturing to do. Every person I've known at 15 has been too young to live independently without screwing themselves over in some way or form.
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> individual freedom to the maximum extent
I have to ask. What are these things that you felt you couldn't do when you were financially dependent on your parents / living with them.
> I think you have some kind of archaic idea of what parents supporting their child looks like. My parents let me pursue my dream (tbf conveniently it was in STEM) and funded my undergrad and masters.
Your experience is not necessarily universal.
> I have to ask. What are these things that you felt you couldn't do when you were financially dependent on your parents / living with them.
I'm from East Texas and I know of many families back home that have a "our money, our roof, our rules" mindset. It's not uncommon for these parents to use the threat of "do what we say or we're pulling your support" to control them. For instance "We don't like your girlfriend, break up with her or we're cutting your support", or "We'll only pay for your college if you major in what we want".
I've also seen these families impose curfews on their adult children, prevent them from drinking at home, prevent them from having certain hobbies or socializing with certain people, etc.
Myself and many of my peers moved away from home and became financially independent from our parents to avoid this situation.
In my country tuition is a loan. It's not archaic to say that if parents control your money, they can control your life. Some might not use that, many will. And what do middle-upper class parents control when they have the power to? Start with the most important things in your life and work down - who and how you date, what career you pursue, where you live, on and on. If you've never met a person whose parents held the purse strings and used it as power over them then you have a lucky group of friends.
It was Lenin, but the central thesis is not mistaken. The family was seen as a roadblock to the revolution since women, useful wards-of-the-state-to-be, were too busy caring for families to help the cause.
Edit: since I was downvoted, and since the Lenin interview is gold, I'll mine some for you... hopefully with enough context:
"I ask you: Is now the time to amuse proletarian women with discussions on how one loves and is loved, how one marries and is married? Of course, in the past, present and future, and among different nations-what is proudly called historical materialism! Now all the thoughts of women comrades, of the women of the working people, must be directed towards the proletarian revolution."
> Are they wrong? If you had time to apply for colleges because you had housing in high school and didn't have to work all day to pay for food and housing, are you truly independent? If you didn't have to fetch your own water every morning and hunt your food? Maybe you think I'm taking the argument too far, but I see where they are coming from. True "freedom" is a bit of a myth, and shouldn't it be?
I totally get where you're coming from, but I think you're tilting at something of a straw man here.
Consider my own case: I received quite a bit of assistance from my parents, particularly in my late teens and early twenties. By 30 or so, direct assistance from them was limited to non-essentials - they paid for our annual family vacations, for instance, and bought my wife a new SUV when our second child was born. None of those were necessary, but of course we benefited.
The point of individualism as I see it isn't to be able to say "I accepted help from no one to get to where I am", but to be able to say "I am secure where I am, and need help from no one to maintain that security." It might seem like a subtle difference in phrasing, but it's actually not.
One of the biggest reasons I work as hard as I do to build wealth is so my children will have the best start in life I can give them. That doesn't mean that I'm going to give them a big chunk of cash - or any cash, honestly. That means that we can homeschool them, my wife doesn't have to work outside the home, and we can afford to give them experiences that many (or most) their peers will likely never have.
My dream isn't to create heiresses that never have to work. My dream is to give my daughters a childhood that prepares them to be the absolute best people they can be, and from which they can springboard to the life they decide they want.
To put it another way - if, in thirty years, my daughters are living a life of luxury having never hard to work hard for it or stress about money, I will have failed. If they're living a secure and fulfilling life, then I've succeeded regardless of what socio-economic class they fit into.
> In any case, other cultures have taken on the idea of familial responsibility and wealth to great success by their own measures. Just because it is different, doesn't mean it's bad.
I completely agree here. My parents cared for my maternal grandparents throughout my childhood. First they move them close and kept them in their life (and took advantage of "free" childcare). Over time they moved them closer still until they needed on-site care, at which point they bought a larger home and built out the walk-out basement into an apartment for them. They were part of my family life until I myself was an adult, and my parents took full responsibility for their care.
I'm 35 today, and see myself stepping into the same role for my in-laws. My parents are both healthy and financially secure, but my in-laws are not. They're still able to live on their own (and likely will be for a couple of decades now at least), but I've taken responsibility for their transportation needs and provided them with a reliable, new vehicle that they otherwise wouldn't have been able to afford. I'm working on expanding my personal investment portfolio into residential real estate, and expect that within a few years I will have moved them into a "rental" property that my wife and I own, at which point I will consider myself responsible for their housing. If the time comes that one or both of them need 24/7 onsite care, then they'll probably be living either in our home or very nearby.
Right now one of the problems is that if the two parties, the Democrats are pro-pension and pro-equalization but anti-housing. Meanwhile the republicans are pro-housing and mostly anti wealth tax. I think that’s one of the fundamental reasons we’re in this mess.
Individual freedom has always been an illusion, but the interventions you are proposing would help us all take responsibility for the system rather than defaulting to one where the only system we can maybe rely on is our family.
"Let go of the idea that you can live as an independent human" have a word with yourself.