A Golden or Gilded Age? Part II

[00:00:00] Foreign. [00:00:11] Okay, so this is the continuation of my last podcast. Those who listen to it know that it was cut out abruptly by a tornado update. We're all fine. It was actually a pretty significant storm that came through here. I did not realize till later since I was already in the basement, my kids were already. My two kids who were home at the time were already in the basement. I didn't have to stop the live stream or anything for that to make sure I was safe because we were where we would be anyway in a case of a tornado. But it came through. I mean, I did not hear any. It was a tornado warning. [00:00:46] I did not hear people actually say that they saw anybody say they saw a tornado. But it was like over 70 mile an hour winds and a lot of trees were knocked down. But we got lucky. We only lost power for a few minutes and didn't really lose Internet except for when the power was out. But I couldn't get back on obviously. But I left abruptly and I wanted to finish, I wanted to finish that podcast. I didn't have it. I didn't have time to the last couple days. So I wanted to today. [00:01:10] So if you remember. And I. So I'd suggest go back and listen to the last podcast about the golden age or a gilded age. And I talk about the, the rising prices in our country and how it particularly impacts the young, how it is inflation has been a. Just a terrible thing for young people in particular and it hasn't hurt the boomer generation anywhere near as much as the, the Gen Z generation. [00:01:38] And so I, I was on the point though and again, I'll promote my book. I don't mind Moral Money because it talks a lot about what inflation does to an economy and why it is a type of theft and I would say even immoral. The way that the government controls our money supply, I think is actually ends up being immoral. That's why the book is called Moral Money, because it's talking about immoral form of money which would have to be a form of money that's not controlled by the government. [00:02:07] And the book is the case for bitcoin and I think a case could be made for gold as well. All those gold bugs out there who don't really believe in bitcoin. I hear you, but you know, I think Bitcoin is the 21st century version of it, of moral money at the very least. [00:02:23] So the question though is what can young people do and what can the older generation, the boomers, Gen Xers like me, what can we do? To help young people who are in this bind now. I will say, and I can't remember exactly how much this I covered in the last podcast. I didn't go back and look exactly, but so I might repeat a little bit of it, but I don't think too, I didn't get too much into this. [00:02:46] I would say, first of all, it is possible. [00:02:48] Don't, don't fall into a victim mentality. I know I talked about that last time, where it's just impossible that the world is against you and there's no way you can succeed. And by the way, when I talk about being economically successful or anything like that, I'm not talking about becoming a multi millionaire or a billionaire or anything like that. I'm just talking about being able to have a standard of living that most Americans have gotten used to over the past few years, decades. A standard living where you can buy a single family house might be a modest one. You get a little yard, you can have, you know, you have a few kids. Hopefully if you're Catholic, you're having as many kids as possible. If you're not Catholic, you should be having as many kids as possible too. And you can raise them with a decent standard of living. [00:03:30] And so that is still possible. It just is harder for young people. And so some of the things I would say is, I talked about being creative and this is where I left it. I know. [00:03:40] I really think it, a lot of it has to do with what career you're going to choose, especially as a young person. Now, just to be clear, I think it's different for men than it is for women. I don't care what that makes me sound like. It just is that men absolutely should be preparing themselves for being able to support themselves and support their families. [00:04:06] That's what young men should be doing. They should be prepared to do that. Young women don't necessarily have to do that. Obviously, if they're single, they're not living at home. They're going to have to be able to support themselves. So they have to have some type of income to do that. But it's okay for a young woman to live at home, have her parents support, and then get married and have her husband support her. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. In fact, that's a very noble way to live because she will become the heart of her family with her, with her husband. She will be raising her children, she will be caring for them. [00:04:39] No more important job in the whole world. [00:04:42] So. But for young men particularly, I'm talking to Here, in other words, I mean there's some, this works for young women as well, but more for young men. [00:04:50] I really think we have to reconsider how this works as far as what you decide to do after high school and even while you're in high school, but particularly after high school. I know when I was graduating from high school about 35 years ago, I, I, I just assumed you go to college and most people I knew, who I was friends with, people in my classes went to college. Now in my high school we had like 500 people in my graduating class. I'm not saying, I'd say probably only about less than 100 of them went off to college like that. But in the, I was in the honors classes and the academically high level class, whatever, and we all went to college. It was assumed you went to college. In fact, it was assumed something's a little bit wrong with you. Maybe you're not quite as intelligent if you didn't go college. It's not like we were told this, it's just like that's what we thought, like if you're smart, you go to college. That was the assumption. [00:05:45] If you're not so smart, well, there's other opportunities, you go in vocational trades, things like that. I just think that's, that assumption wasn't true then, but it wasn't as obvious. [00:05:58] But it's definitely not true now. [00:06:00] And I think all young men should reconsider the idea of going to college. I'm not saying nobody should go to college. There are actual, there are good paths in life that include college and I. But the point is you need to know what that is. Don't go to college as an extension of high school. [00:06:18] After you graduate from high school, you should be thinking, okay, what do I need to do? What do I want to do as far as a career path and what's open to me, what's a possibility? And I think you really, if you don't know that, if you don't know the answer to that question, don't go to college to find out. That's what I think I'm trying to say here. If you're not sure, if you know for sure, I want to be a molecular biologist, I think that's a thing, I just made it up. [00:06:44] If that's what you want to be, well, obviously probably have to go to college to do that. [00:06:48] If you decide, okay, I want to be an accountant. I think you might only need a two year degree for that, but and look into that, then you probably had to have some college education to do that if you want to be a doctor or something like that. [00:07:01] Although I would not recommend most people go into the medical field because of all the moral problems that are in that whole, in the whole healthcare field or if you do go into alternative healthcare, I should say. [00:07:13] But really look at the trades. So for example, being an electrician, being a plumber, being in construction, things like that, a lot of them you actually get paid to be an apprentice and to learn how to do your craft. So instead of going into a ton of debt in order to get, get a good paying job, you get paid to get a good paying job because the trades do pay well. [00:07:36] Now does it have the high end, top end of some, some professions that you need a college degree for? No, not necessarily. [00:07:45] But the truth is the really high end, making tons and tons of money, which shouldn't be anybody's goal in life. But that's usually, you don't need college for that either because that's usually being an entrepreneur, something like that. But the high income as far as just like 2000-003000-00400,000, those type of jobs typically do need a college degree to get something like that. Eventually you don't get that right out of college of course, but eventually. [00:08:08] But if you just want a nice paying job that's secure, that can support a family, then most of these trades are a good deal. [00:08:17] Now you have to have some attitude in it. You have to want to do it on some level. I mean if you're terrible with your hands or something like that, it might be difficult to be a plumber, but, but the point is, is like these are trades that are very noble, they're very needed and also they're probably the most AI proof jobs out there, careers out there. I'm not saying one day there won't be AI powered robots that are doing a lot of that work, but it's going to be a lot longer in the future than a lot of jobs. A lot of college degree jobs that are getting that could potentially be decimated by AI very quickly and so definitely do not look into, I mean look into not. What am I trying to say? Consider not going to college. [00:08:59] Don't make that an assumption. You have to go to college. Look in the trades particularly. And also it's okay like after you graduate, if you don't have any definite plans and you're not sure what trade you want to go into to just get a job temporarily in something that's just kind of low paying until you Figure it out. That's not ideal, don't get me wrong. But it's better than going into a ton of debt to go to college when you don't know what you want to do. [00:09:27] Now, I do think going to college also, if you do decide you want to go to college, you definitely need to be financially responsible by it. [00:09:35] By that I mean if you're getting a huge college debt to get a medium job, medium range job, that's ludicrous. I knew people, okay, you got to translate this somehow in your head to Modern in 2026 numbers. But I remember in the mid-90s, fellow students in the master's degree in theology at Steubenville were going over $50,000 in debt total for a job to get to become a DRE, which was paying them like 20 to $25,000 a year. [00:10:10] That's insane, frankly. And I. Sorry to be so blunt. That's stupid. It just is just stupid. If you're getting a job, if you're getting a huge loan for a job that doesn't even pay as much as your loan does for a year and doesn't have any real quick advancement in income, a DRA is not going all of a sudden going to start making tons more money soon. You just can't do it. Now, when I say it's stupid, I'm not even trying to insult people who have done it because what I've learned is a lot of people just are financially ignorant. They just don't understand how money works because they've never been taught. So I bet, I guess the word I should use isn't stupid as much as ignorant. Now, some people might be stupid, but. But a lot of people might just be ignorant. They don't realize this. To me, that's hard to believe because I understand money pretty well and always have. My dad taught it to me. [00:11:03] But just I'm telling you right now, if you're a young person listening to this, don't go into huge amounts of debt to go to college in order to get a job that's not going to pay a ton. And most of them aren't going to pay as much as you think. [00:11:15] But if you do want to go to college though, what I'm saying is maybe you have to work a job while you're doing it. Work two jobs to pay your way through. Maybe you have to take longer instead of a four years to get finished. You have to take six years to get finished working in the evening or you're going to class in the Evenings, working during the day, something like that. The point is, you can make it work. Just if the only way to make it, quote, unquote, make it work is to go into huge amounts of debt, don't do it, it doesn't work then. So that's, that's the big thing, I'd say for young people. Another thing is be willing to move. Now this, this one is painful, me, for me to say, because I do believe the importance of communities. I do believe the importance of being settled into a local community. This is something I didn't really do. I moved around a number of times for jobs, things like that. And I, and I do kind of regret that I wish I hadn't. I wish I just stayed in a community my whole married life. But that being said, there are economic realities. If, for example, you're in Washington, D.C. or Los Angeles or San Francisco or New York or Boston, one of these places where the cost of living is so high, you might need to consider moving to another part of the country where the cost of living isn't so high. I know a number of people, young people who've made it work in Steubenville, Ohio, simply because. And they can do things they couldn't do anywhere else simply because the cost of living in Steubenville, Ohio is a lot cheaper. Now, there's reasons for that. [00:12:38] If the cost of living somewhere is lower, that is the cost of housing particularly is lower in an area, that means there's less demand for people to want to live there. And there's usually reasons for that. And there are reasons. I'm not booting on Steubenville here. I'm just simply saying the reason the cost of living there is so low is there's, there's reasons that's. I'll just leave it at that. [00:13:01] But, but understand what it is that's important to you, like for, for a non Catholic, moving to Steubenville would make no sense because what benefits are there? It's, it's a, it's a depressed steel town that's got a lot of problems. But if you're Catholic, it also has a huge Catholic community with lots of great people, great families, resources for homeschooling and schools and things like that. So, I mean, there are, you know, there could be places like that. I think there's other places around the country like that. I think, like, you know, Ave Maria tried to set something up, but I think it's pretty expensive to live there. I don't think a young person can, can Move to Ave Maria, Florida. You know, right off the bat, you got to already be kind of well off to live there. But there's other communities as well. The point is it didn't have to be a Catholic community, like known Catholic community. [00:13:48] Find place somewhere where there is a Catholic community. But it's. The cost of living is less or, and, and the work prospects are better. [00:13:58] I, and hopefully stay there and build a community there and, you know, build roots there. I, I don't like this because, I mean, my four adult children have all moved away from where I live for reasons, because we moved around. This isn't actually where they grew up. So. I understand, but, you know, I wish they lived closer. I mean, they know that I'm not guilting them if they happen to be listening. I wish they live closer, but I understand why they live where they live. So I don't really like giving this advice to young people to consider moving, but I do think it might be economically necessary. And so I think it needs to be on the table. [00:14:30] Another thing is this is going to be a, A counterintuitive advice to young people. Might sound counterintuitive. [00:14:38] Consider marrying young. [00:14:39] Considering getting married young, like, you know, under the age of 23 or whatever the. Yeah, when you graduate from college, 22, 21, 20, something like that. Get married young. I know it sounds counterintuitive because all of a sudden if you're a young man, like, man, I gotta support myself now. I gotta support wife and maybe kids already. And. But here's the thing. It's just been proven that married people do better economically than single people do. They have advantages of being a team, so to speak, in which they can divide and conquer. And I'm talking, I'm not talking about getting two jobs and each getting jobs. I'm just talking about like, running the household, things like that. [00:15:21] You, you, you can do things better as a married couple than you can as a single person. I'm talking about, of course, if you have not have a vocation to. You don't have, I'm not talking about if you have vocation to priesthood or religious life, obviously, but, you know, if, if you're dating somebody, you're 20, 21 years old, get married. Don't wait, don't wait to say, oh, I gotta wait till I'm settled and I've got a good job and stuff like that. And I'm, you know, I'm 27, 28 years old, then I get married. No, actually, I think that's bad advice. I think the opposite should be true. If you were with somebody you believe is going to be your spouse, should be your spouse and, and they obviously have to agree with you, then go ahead and get married because you're going to have that support system built in, in your marriage that's going to allow you to economically do better over the long term. It might be a little tough at first, but I think it works out. And also until you start having kids, the wife can work as well. I mean even if she doesn't have a degree or she's working odd jobs or something. That can help out as well early on I'm a huge proponent of obviously the mother staying at home once kids are, are in the picture. But until that happens you can, you can both work and maybe save up some money. So I, I, I would just argue for that as well. That's another, another piece of advice is Mary Young if, if, if you can make it, if you can swing it. [00:16:40] Now I do want to switch though. Now I want to talk about advice now to the older generation and I actually want, I'm going to do something, Mark this on your calendars, clip it, do whatever you need to do. But I'm gonna, I'm gonna admit where I was wrong in the past where I've changed my mind. I should say I don't think I was wrong as much as I changed my mind because it's more of a prudential opinion and that is, I posted, I don't remember it was maybe a couple years ago on X something to the effect that parents should basically urge their young, their sons to leave the house by, you know, by after they, after they graduate high school, not to kick them out their 18th birthday. Some people try and interpret like that but basically be directing them, training them so that they, they can be self supportive and basically out of the house as soon as possible. [00:17:34] I don't think that about, I, I haven't thought that about women, your, your daughters in a long time. But I, I, I didn't think it that at the time about daughters but I did think that about sons. I actually take that back now. [00:17:45] I think in today's economy I totally get a young man starting off living with his parents obviously before he gets married, living with his parents for a while just to get, take, take advantage of their parents, of their, his parents advantages. [00:18:03] His parents had certain advantages I. E My generation, people older than me had, had advantages that they don't have as far as the economy goes. And so they're a little bit better off and if your parents obviously will allow it, and I'm saying this to parents, consider letting your, your, your sons even live at home for a while after high school, maybe even after college. [00:18:24] Obviously there's a lot of caveats here. [00:18:27] If it's the case where your son is a deadbeat, playing video games in the basement all the time, not even looking for a job or just has a dead end job, doesn't really care, kick the boy out. [00:18:38] There's a failure here on some level and he, and you're not helping him any by letting them leech off of you. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about the son who has a plan, knows what he wants to do, but it's, it's hard to achieve that to get to the point where he can put a down payment on a house or even afford to rent or, you know, maybe he's saying, I'm gonna get this, I'm training for this, I'll get this job at this point. But I want to save my money so I can have money for rent or have money for a down payment on a house or whatever the case may be. Maybe he's engaged, whatever. You know, all these factors I totally get in those situations. A son living with his parents. And I think the parents, I think that's fine. I did not used to think that. I used to think that I looked down on that because honestly I think I was just projecting my own generation situation in which most people who did that, the sons who lived at home when I was that age, you know, early college age, something like that, they were mostly dead beats. [00:19:40] And so I, I kind of projected that on everybody. And you know, I, I kind of realize now this economy is different than it was when I was that age. So I would say first of all to older people, parents, let your kids help out your kids financially as you can. That's not the same as like you, you're supporting them for life and they're, and they're just deadbeats. But help them achieve their goals and there might be some barriers. There are barriers you did not have that you can help them overcome. I think that's kind of what I'm saying. Young people, they have some barriers that you don't, that we people like my age did not have and let's help them get over it. [00:20:18] Another thing is, I do think we need to stop being so judgmental about Gen Z being a bunch of lazy bombs. Of course there's lazy bombs among Gen Z. There's lazy bums in every generation, of course there's people who play the victim in, in Gen Z that, that shouldn't and, and you know, you know, promote socialism where all that is all true. [00:20:41] That being said, just this idea, you'll see a Ben Shapiro do this or a Mark Levin do this. People who are multi millionaires have it made often did not grow up in some hardship themselves. [00:20:56] And they will act like if you're not, if you, if you say like oh, it's kind of tough out there, they're like, you're just a big whiner. You're, you're getting your lattes and all that stuff. It just, that's not, that's just not true. [00:21:09] There are hard working young people that do have it. They have disadvantages that we did not have. And so I think we need to recognize that not that we're throwing a pity party for them or feeling sorry for them or anything like that all the time, but that we should be helping them and not, not tearing them down, not, not just insulting them or anything like that. And I think as Catholics, as a parent in the parish, I think what we should do, the older people be on the lookout for young people who are trying to make it work but maybe are struggling, but they have a plan seeing if we can help them out as well. Obviously your first responsibility to your own children. [00:21:46] But if you know, like a young person and maybe they need a, a place to crash and maybe you're an older person who has rental properties or something like that and you can, you can help them out, give them a discount on rental property or, or you know, a guy who's, who's got a job opening or, or something like that, you have your own business in which you could hire people, be looking at the, at the young people in your parish and what they're trying to do and because usually if they're, if they're going to Mass regularly, they're likely not a deadbeat. [00:22:17] That's just, might have been true decades ago, but it's not true anymore. [00:22:20] If a young person, a 25 year old man, for example, is going to mass each week serious about his faith, it's highly unlikely that he's a deadbeat. He's probably trying to make it work. He might not know how to make it work. Maybe his parents weren't that great at teaching that you don't know. [00:22:35] So do what you can to help them. And one of the things I'm going to be doing this coming school year is I'm teaching a Homeschooling class co op on, we call it consumer math or something like that because that's what it's supposed to be called. But it's gonna be a lot of personal finance, a lot of education in how to manage maybe a small business, but more importantly, just manage the home. [00:22:57] I think that's another thing you could do. I know our parents did this at one point. I'm not sure if we're still doing it, where some older people, they taught a class on personal finance on budgeting, things like that. I'm amazed by the number of young people who don't know how to budget. But that's very important. [00:23:12] It's more important the tougher things are economically out there. [00:23:17] So if you have a knowledge in being able to understand budgeting, things like that, offer maybe to your parish priest, say, hey, I'd like to teach this class on budgeting and see, maybe nobody shows up, I don't know. But you could be helping some people. But this is ways, I think we, instead of just kind of pointing the finger at young people and saying, oh, you got so. You got so easy. It's not, you know, you're just making excuses. Instead we say, no, you got some, you got some barriers we did not have. I'm going to help you overcome them, obviously help your own kids, but also help those in your parish community or in the larger community. [00:23:51] So I'm going to cut it off here. Pre. It's going to be a short podcast today because really I'm just finishing the last podcast, but I wanted to make sure I, I felt like I needed to say those things. Well, because that was an important part of my last podcast that got cut off by the tornado. So to review, yes, things are harder today than they were 20 years ago, 30 years ago for young people. That is absolutely true and it's the fault of many people. And if name a politician and they're part of the blame, whether it's Trump or Biden or Obama, Bush, whoever, they're all part of the problem because they all print money for their. Whatever they want the government to spend money on and that causes rising prices and other things, other reasons for that as well. Yes, it's tougher, but young people, just because that's true does not give you the justification to become a, to, to, to become a victim. Don't take a victim mentality. Understand that yes, you might have to work harder than your parents did to achieve the exact same standard of living, but that's just a lot. You've been given and just. So do it. Work harder then and, and prove everybody who's complaining about you wrong. [00:24:59] But you older people, don't, don't be like attacking Gen Z as a bunch of lazy good for nothings or anything like that. They do have things that are some barriers we don't have. Do everything you can. Help them out first with your own children, obviously, but also with others that you might know. Help them out, do whatever you can to, to give them a leg up so that they can succeed like you succeeded and do whatever you can to help them out. So. Okay, I'm gonna wrap it up there. I appreciate everybody who jumped in who were just eagerly anticipating the end of this podcast. It took us days. It took. We got made through a tornado. Well, we persevered. We weren't victims and we, we made it through. So I appreciate everybody who tuned in for this one. Okay, everybody, God love you. Until, until next time. God bless you. Wait a minute, I said that wrong. How do I normally say that? Boy, I'm just gonna keep this run. Oh, yeah. God love you and remember the poor. Yeah, that's what I say. God love you and remember.