Everything Is So Fucked

Have you ever visited Annotated Rant? It's hilarious. My favorite is Fuck The South.

I saw a similar rant recently and wanted to share it with you. It's from a Millennial (I assume) in response to The Atlantic's recent article on why Millenials aren't buying anything (cuz their cheap). The following rant explains it's not cuz they're cheap:

Why Millennials aren’t buying cars or houses, and what that means for the economy

HAHA NO MONAY!!!!!

Maybe our generation aren’t buying houses and cars because EVERYTHING IS SO FUCKED

You want us to actually talk to bank people and get home loans and auto loans? They are still fucking us! Any time I go into a bank, I feel disgusted. You want me to do MORE business with the who want to charge me 5 dollars for every single swipe of my debit card? Get fucked!

You think I’m gonna buy a car? A car? Where am I gonna get the money for a car and the insurance and the insurance against the insurance company if God forbid they decide to do the same things they did to the poor Fisher family and countless others? And fucking GAS? Are you crazy? The planet is dying, and you want me to buy gas at $FUCK.YOU/gallon?

In the past 5 years since the economy fell apart, we’ve been adapting. We’ve been listening to countless horror stories of those who made the risk. Those who saved and did it right, and still ended up with an inferior product with inferior service that RUINS YOUR LIFE. It’s not like ordering a pizza, and instead of sausage, you get cheese. It’s like ordering a pizza and then your credit is ruined and you are flat broke. The pains of acquisition aren’t worth it if it can all be taken away like a bureaucratic fart in the bathtub. It would be smarter to save our money for tickets to god-damn Mars than to invest in these hideous, broken systems.

We aren’t cheap. We fucking hate doing business with you people.

All these pieces on Millennials are so mired in confusion since we don’t even trust journalists any more. The news, our entire lives, has been scary. Think about being 8 and processing the deaths of abortion doctors or homegrown terrorism. Now try to process the news when every asshole on camera just lies. The news hasn’t had an ounce of truth in it for 10 years. Can you not understand how much we don’t trust anyone who is older than us? How can you trust anybody when the president and vice-president of the United States lied to the Secretary of State so they could START THE WRONG WAR!

Fucking seriously.

Also, that graphic? Is that what you think we all look like? Are you fucking kidding me, Atlantic?

I hope they never find out how to market to us. I hope we splinter so much that companies like Ford will have to make a decent product instead of asking the Vomit Spouts that created Jersey Shore how to create MORE fantasies about how great THINGS will make your life. We don’t attach to things because things break. We saw everything break.

But, that’s just me.

h/t TFTT

Wednesday Bonus Cartoon Fun: Too Big To Fail, Too Small To Succeed

Thursday Cartoon Fun: Yes, Lost Monkeys Edition

Monday Cartoon Fun: Poor Wretches Edition

Why Is Germany Kicking Our Ass? Rising Hourly Pay And Unions, That's Why

Germany is growing much faster than the United States. Its unemployment rate is now only 6.1 percent (we’re now at 9.1 percent).

What’s Germany’s secret? In sharp contrast to the decades of stagnant wages in America, real average hourly pay has risen almost 30 percent there since 1985. Germany has been investing substantially in education and infrastructure.

How did German workers do it? A big part of the story is German labor unions are still powerful enough to insist that German workers get their fair share of the economy’s gains.

That’s why pay at the top in Germany hasn’t risen any faster than pay in the middle. As David Leonhardt reported in the New York Times recently, the top 1 percent of German households earns about 11 percent of all income – a percent that hasn’t changed in four decades.

Contrast this with the United States, where the top 1 percent went from getting 9 percent of total income in the late 1970s to more than 20 percent today.

Bob Reich

Friday Bonus Cartoon Fun: Let The Taliban Do It Edition

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Wednesday Cartoon Fun: Debt Ceiling Edition

Monday Cartoon Fun: Victory Edition

Monday Bonus Cartoon Fun: Perceptions Edition

Just Walk Away

My son and I were in Los Angeles for Passover over the weekend.  We ate great food, saw friends and family, and had an all around great time.  We drove, and though there was some traffic heading down I-5, and then back up, with my cousin in the car with us for the ride it went very quickly.  It was a good trip.

My best friend and his family let us stay at their house, as usual, and that's always nice because we have been friends since we were 3 years old (we're pushing 50 now) and we live far apart.  Getting together only happens a couple times a year.

We always talk and talk and talk.  His wife, who I have known since high school is the most awesome woman I know, and incredibly smart and sensitive.  My best friend is a lucky fucker.  We were talking politics and education and all that.  We got on to the issue of the economy and the housing bubble and the fact that my mortgage is so far underwater it will never come back up to a level where I won't lose money.  Ever.

So, I have decided to be one of those folks who simply walks away from the house I bought.  I put a very big down-payment on the house.  That was stupid, in retrospect.  I will never see a return on my investment, in fact I am going to lose it.  I have been paying my mortgage, but it has been going down a hole, not really back into the house.  So, I must walk away for my sanity.

It is a devastating realization.  It calls into question one's ability to navigate this life, or that's how it feels for me.  It is emasculating, frightening, and depressing.  It is hard too because the equity was supposed to send the kid to college, and there is no equity, and there won't be.  Ever.  Fuck.

The discussion with my friends, and the subsequent decision to walk away, was both painful and cathartic (as is writing this post) at a time when catharsis seems to be the only good thing around.  I am slowly realizing that money, something we teachers struggle to make, is just money.  How else can I think about it, now that I have chosen to walk away from all that I invested in?  But it's true, it's just money.  I have friends, family, love and support, so how bad could it really be?

The best part about it is my son.  He now knows that at some point we are going to have to leave the house, forever, and never have the money we paid for it back, and what that means.  I explained the financial workings of the underwater mortgage, and how I can never sell the house and break even, much less make a profit, and he looked at me and said, "That makes good sense.  When you're in a hole, stop digging, as you used to tell me. You're such a smart dad!"  I love that kid. [When he was little and he got caught in a lie (and I could always tell) I would tell him that I know he's not being truthful, so he is in a hole and must get out via the ladder of truth.  He remembered, and clearly understood, and was able to use that knowledge to comfort his old man.]

I did try to get a mortgage modification, 5 times, but no luck.  I will still try to get the house for free by showing, hopefully, that Chase doesn't know where the actual note is, like some lucky folks. I have no hopes of this happening, but I must at least try.

The walking away does weigh heavy on my mind.  But no longer worrying about "losing the house" and instead just giving it away, does ease my mind a bit, and perhaps the graying of my hair will slow.

I figure I have about 4 months of not paying before they boot us.  I guess during that time I should begin to sell all those appliances I had to buy. Fuck, again.

Saturday Cartoon Fun: The Ayn Ryand Plan Edition

Wednesday Cartoon Fun: Spend It Wisely Edition

Fact: Chris Christie "failed to carry [his] burden."

New Jersey Superior Court judge Peter Doyne (acting as an appointed special master) issued his report on how the Christie $1 billion budget cut will hurt the most at-risk students.

"The difficulty in addressing New Jersey's fiscal crisis and its constitutionally mandated obligation to educate our children requires an exquisite balance not easily attained," wrote Doyne, according to the Star-Ledger. "Something need be done to equitably address these competing imperatives. That answer, though, is beyond the purview of this report. For the limited question posed to the Master, it is clear the State has failed to carry its burden."

HuffPo

"Despite spending levels that meet or exceed virtually every state in the country, and that saw a significant increase in spending levels from 2000 to 2008, our 'at risk' children are now moving further from proficiency," he said.

NJ.com

Wednesday Cartoon Fun: Budget Graph

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Wednesday Cartoon Fun: The Gerbil In The Room Edition

Giants Thunder By

The Economist reconfigures an old way of picturing inequality:

Imagine people’s height being proportional to their income, so that someone with an average income is of average height. Now imagine that the entire adult population of America is walking past you in a single hour, in ascending order of income.

The first passers-by, the owners of loss-making businesses, are invisible: their heads are below ground. Then come the jobless and the working poor, who are midgets. After half an hour the strollers are still only waist-high, since America’s median income is only half the mean. It takes nearly 45 minutes before normal-sized people appear. But then, in the final minutes, giants thunder by. With six minutes to go they are 12 feet tall. When the 400 highest earners walk by, right at the end, each is more than two miles tall.

via Sully

Saturday Cartoon Fun: Debt Ceiling Edition