re: Why do old people go to the default argument of $6 coffee when talking about affordability

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You can brew premium coffee in your own house for less than 25 cents a cup and it takes 5 minutes. You can't brew beer at home like that, so the comparison is null. Yes, I know you can brew beer at home but it's still pretty expensive, not easy, and takes more than five minutes.

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I’ve brewed a few batches of beer and it’s as expensive as buying a premium beer in the store. Someone could get the price down if they had an in on cheap ingredients but not much.

$6/day is over $2000/year. That’s a European vacation if you know what you’re doing. Get 4-6 people and you can have a grand old time. Rent a beach house, etc etc. Or, that’s your gas money for the year. Even better, put that in VTI and watch it grow. Put the dividends into new shares, I’m up 50% in the last four year.

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You can brew premium coffee in your own house for less than 25 cents a cup and it takes 5 minutes.

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A home espresso machine is expensive and it doesn't produce enough pressure to match the taste of a commercial machine. Most people cannot tell the difference and those people can stay away from Starbucks.

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wackatimesthree

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Could you steelman your argument for me because it seems like you're making a counter claim to my claim that a notable number of boomers made poor financial choices just as the younger generations do.

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a Starbuck's. Don't like it, too strong and burned for my taste buds

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This right here. Hotel Starbucks in the room is just as bad. I don't get it.

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You have a framed poster on the wall that you blow kisses at every day.

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nice comeback
Are you 10?

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these days that they think that tariffs are right of center

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Read a fricking history book idiot

They were historically right of center and one of the main proponents of conservatives until after WWII when the GOP was co-opted by Libertarians

Even the 2 pillar Presidents of the modern GOPe, Regan and Nixon used tariffs to protect American industry


So since you've outed yourself as GOPe cuck, go sit in your chair and watch you some Fox News

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My response is that we've never taken a summer vacation trip during those decades. Wife has no fun while worrying about the dogs and I don't want to go to Cancun

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This is pathetic.

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He seems to desire to just call people snowflakes and ignore making a coherent argument.

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Mf or WTT? Mf has yet to make a cogent argument in the thread, as far as I can tell.

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First, "notable" is a pretty broad term and can mean about anything. Yes, a lot of boomers made poor financial choices, but you're talking about a cohort that a lot of young people, for some odd reason, have decided enriched themselves to the detriment of the younger generations. For that to make any sense, we'd have to agree that enough boomers are doing pretty okay that younger people are pointing fingers at them and wondering how.

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Perhaps we're debating semantics here but my initial claim was that the boomers here, by and large, seemingly only highlight the poor financial decisions of the younger generation while glossing over the poor financial choices of their own. We can nail down a more concrete definition for notable, sure, but I feel like your defense doesn't really prove my point to be incorrect and somewhat misrepresents what point I was making originally. I didn't make the claim that no boomers made good choices with money so the fact that there are boomers who did make good choices doesn't neccesarily prove that there aren't millions of them who didn't. To address your latter point, it is true that there are boomers who did and still currently struggle financially but I do think there's at least some copelling evidence that some of the voting patterns and policies that could be associated with the boomer era have at least some culpability in the modern affordability issue that all Americans are facing. Even so, the original claim wasn't that young people are or aren't blaming boomers for their financial decisions, it was that boomers in this thread are ignoring the warts of boomer finance and crushing down hard on the fiscal decisions of the younger generations.

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Second, the reason I'd make the argument that young people today are making poorer financial decisions than older generations is they're bitching and moaning about their financial lot in life while living in the wealthiest country the world has ever seen. Life has never been better and easier in America than it is today, and that's true for everybody - the poor, the middle class, the wealthy - young and old. If you're bitching about your financial situation, with relatively rare exception (there is bad luck out there) - it's because you've made shitty financial decisions.

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I understand what you're trying to imply but it would seem there's quite a bit of oversimplification in your argument. I'd argue that just because the United States as a whole is the wealthist country in the world does not negate or disprove the reality of the affordability problem. You wouldn't say that just because you live in a wealthy state that beef prices, for example, weren't a problem when they spiked as highly as they did. Also, the claim that life has never been better or easier is a particularly broad one that ignores some nuance. The income to price ratio for housing, higher ed and healthcare is absolutely not more appealing today than it was 50 years ago.


None of this is particularly compelling though to disprove my claim that Americans of every generation make poor financial decisions, not just the younger generations.

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I do think there's at least some copelling evidence that some of the voting patterns and policies that could be associated with the boomer era have at least some culpability in the modern affordability issue that all Americans are facing.

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First, what is the "boomer era"? Not suggesting this is you, but I've had this type of exchange in the recent past with a couple of posters that essentially defined the "boomer era", the era boomer's are responsible for everything, as 1960 thru today, so it would be good to establish what the "boomer era" is in your view.

And if you would, what's some of the evidence you allude to?

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I'd argue that just because the United States as a whole is the wealthist country in the world does not negate or disprove the reality of the affordability problem. You wouldn't say that just because you live in a wealthy state that beef prices, for example, weren't a problem when they spiked as highly as they did.

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But that's not what I argued, that because the US is the wealthiest country there are never affordability challenges for certain goods/services.

What I'm arguing is that affordability issues are wildly overblown. "Life has never been better and easier" - that's what that means. A person or a family can afford a better life, and more easily, than people and families could fifty years ago. That's a broad statement. I didn't mean to compare gas price spikes of the '70's to today's.

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Also, the claim that life has never been better or easier is a particularly broad one that ignores some nuance. The income to price ratio for housing, higher ed and healthcare is absolutely not more appealing today than it was 50 years ago.

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So, the income to price ratio for housing isn't ignoring nuance? Like a shite ton of nuance?

My statement is broad and I left out a lot of detail (nuance) because you don't have all day to read a post, but what I'm arguing is far more nuanced and based on facts/data than the argument you're making.