I am somebody close to retirement now. The two worst times for somebody to be entering the work force since the Great Depression were 1980-84 and 2008-10. I don't think any other period is even close.
I think this is a time of opportunity. Baby Boomers retirement is forcing employers to completely re-evaluate staffing. A lot of managers want to live in the past but they are not going to be able to.
The "good university" thing is BS for undergraduate degrees unless you are focused on networking with wealthy students. It does make a difference for graduate research work as the best schools provide better research professors and projects. I am in engineering and the school somebody went to is a small fraction of how we select new hires and is effectively irrelevant for anybody with more than 2 years experience. I have seen as many people terminated who went to "good schools" as went to "bad schools". In general, it is not a good predictor of how good somebody will be in the work place. It would be nice if high schools and parents focused more on what the kids will be studying than where they will be studying.
There are a lot of really bright young people out there and it has nothing to do with what school they went to. Good managers can identify them and mentor them to move upward and do great things. Bad managers can crush their spirits and grind them into the dust. If we see a bright young person being ground down by a bad manager, it is incumbent on us to help extract them from that situation since they often don't know what the real opportunities are. This is the big management challenge for American business over the next decade because this is where the replacements for the Baby Boomers are coming from.
Re: Crypto
I am opposed to crypto regulation. Good cryptocurrency is like gold - it is effectively self-regulating. You can't fake it, but it can be lost (gold can be sunk at sea or buried and forgotten; crypto can have a forgotten key or lost hard disk).
The big problem with crypto is that it is illiquid in the modern world like gold or art. You can't walk into the grocery store with a gold coin or Van Gogh and buy your month's groceries with it. Same with crypto in most places. So it needs exchanges to be liquid. That is where the trouble starts because it appears that most of the exchanges have been set up offshore by fraudsters.
So crypto should be treated like art, rare coins, etc. There are laws in place that ban outright fraud, so selling a fake painting through Sotheby's can get you sent to jail, same as setting up an FTX exchange. However, I don't see a need to do additional regulation because crypto is so decentralized it would be like the so-called regulation of the sub-prime mortgage securities where the appearance of regulation made everybody think it was safe. Given the international, decentralized nature of crypto-currency (wasn't that the point in the first place?) I don't see a simple way to regulate it that wouldn't be instantly gamed by Wall Street traders into Frankenstein's monster. Buyer beware is the best regulation for it I think. People losing a few billion on a voluntary risky activity may save a major system meltdown in the future - that is why they had canaries in the coal mine https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/canary_in_a_coal_mine#:~:text=canary%20in%20a%20coal%20mine%20(plural%20canaries%20in%20a%20coal,in%20its%20health%20or%20welfare..
Most our bureaucracy was created to sustain the existing system, not disrupt it so don't expect any big swings. Of course, finding something small enough to accomplish, but big enough to matter may be more challenging.
Imagine how rich SS would be if they had allowed , say 25 percent of the fund, to be invested in the stock market over the last 80 years. Investing in t-bills has (and politicians 'borrowing' SS money) not been able to compensate for lower population to fund the system nor so many folks living much longer lives.
You're correct about Social Security. It's a literal pyramid scheme. It will continue to pay out, but the purchasing power of the USD it pays in will be greatly diminished.
Also: BTC is not crypto. There is BTC and perhaps a handful of other tokens. Everything else is a shitcoin.
Everyone who places their faith in the status quo will get exactly what they deserve.
I am somebody close to retirement now. The two worst times for somebody to be entering the work force since the Great Depression were 1980-84 and 2008-10. I don't think any other period is even close.
I think this is a time of opportunity. Baby Boomers retirement is forcing employers to completely re-evaluate staffing. A lot of managers want to live in the past but they are not going to be able to.
The "good university" thing is BS for undergraduate degrees unless you are focused on networking with wealthy students. It does make a difference for graduate research work as the best schools provide better research professors and projects. I am in engineering and the school somebody went to is a small fraction of how we select new hires and is effectively irrelevant for anybody with more than 2 years experience. I have seen as many people terminated who went to "good schools" as went to "bad schools". In general, it is not a good predictor of how good somebody will be in the work place. It would be nice if high schools and parents focused more on what the kids will be studying than where they will be studying.
There are a lot of really bright young people out there and it has nothing to do with what school they went to. Good managers can identify them and mentor them to move upward and do great things. Bad managers can crush their spirits and grind them into the dust. If we see a bright young person being ground down by a bad manager, it is incumbent on us to help extract them from that situation since they often don't know what the real opportunities are. This is the big management challenge for American business over the next decade because this is where the replacements for the Baby Boomers are coming from.
Re: Crypto
I am opposed to crypto regulation. Good cryptocurrency is like gold - it is effectively self-regulating. You can't fake it, but it can be lost (gold can be sunk at sea or buried and forgotten; crypto can have a forgotten key or lost hard disk).
The big problem with crypto is that it is illiquid in the modern world like gold or art. You can't walk into the grocery store with a gold coin or Van Gogh and buy your month's groceries with it. Same with crypto in most places. So it needs exchanges to be liquid. That is where the trouble starts because it appears that most of the exchanges have been set up offshore by fraudsters.
So crypto should be treated like art, rare coins, etc. There are laws in place that ban outright fraud, so selling a fake painting through Sotheby's can get you sent to jail, same as setting up an FTX exchange. However, I don't see a need to do additional regulation because crypto is so decentralized it would be like the so-called regulation of the sub-prime mortgage securities where the appearance of regulation made everybody think it was safe. Given the international, decentralized nature of crypto-currency (wasn't that the point in the first place?) I don't see a simple way to regulate it that wouldn't be instantly gamed by Wall Street traders into Frankenstein's monster. Buyer beware is the best regulation for it I think. People losing a few billion on a voluntary risky activity may save a major system meltdown in the future - that is why they had canaries in the coal mine https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/canary_in_a_coal_mine#:~:text=canary%20in%20a%20coal%20mine%20(plural%20canaries%20in%20a%20coal,in%20its%20health%20or%20welfare..
Amen!!
Most our bureaucracy was created to sustain the existing system, not disrupt it so don't expect any big swings. Of course, finding something small enough to accomplish, but big enough to matter may be more challenging.
Imagine how rich SS would be if they had allowed , say 25 percent of the fund, to be invested in the stock market over the last 80 years. Investing in t-bills has (and politicians 'borrowing' SS money) not been able to compensate for lower population to fund the system nor so many folks living much longer lives.
You're correct about Social Security. It's a literal pyramid scheme. It will continue to pay out, but the purchasing power of the USD it pays in will be greatly diminished.
Also: BTC is not crypto. There is BTC and perhaps a handful of other tokens. Everything else is a shitcoin.
Everyone who places their faith in the status quo will get exactly what they deserve.