“Optimism is the madness of insisting all is well when we are miserable” Voltaire
During World War II the Japanese fighters were extremely honorable and they didn’t give up, ever. They were bound to die with honor rather than surrender. This is not a normal situation among the descendants of Anglo-Saxons. It is true of both the Japanese but also the American Indian. When a warrior in this situation was a pilot, they often flew kamikaze. Now today’s youth know kamikaze as a alcohol shot, but in the South Pacific it was feared as Japanese pilots would try to crash land their planes into ships as a destructive device. Suicide bombers. There is a more general definition that I want to introduce as our word of the day.
Kamikaze-An extremely reckless person who seems to court death.
I don’t want to discuss physical death, although that is also an unfortunate outcome. I want to talk about financial death. Today we have a group of people with an addiction to spending, to Yolo, you only live once. That means saying to hell with saving money, I want to travel, buy that new car, spend money at the club, or dress to impress. Watches and bottle service are in, savings accounts and second jobs are out.
We have a spoiled generation. Julia Carpenter wrote an article for the Wall Street Journal detailing the extent the parents are going to help their children, into their 30s and even 40s. 57% of adults under 25 live with their parents and 59% of parents said they helped their adult children financially. One example detailed a physical therapist living in Austin Texas at home to reduce her student loan because rent was so high. Exactly, why are you living in Austin if you are broke? When people don’t have money, they tend to move, you know Irish Potato Famine and the Okies to California during the dust bowl. But now the kids just move, home. This is the best quote from the article right here, “It helped tremendously,” she said. “I didn’t have to take out more loans to pay for apartment living or anything like that. That stress was gone.” Was that convenient for you? Do you think your parents signed up for you to live in their house until 40? How selfish can a person be?
Carpenter has another example in which a married couple borrow money from siblings and a mother-in-law to buy a house while they wait for the husband’s condo to sell. When it was sold, the siblings got paid back, but not the mother-in-law, she is now on the deed. Do you think she signed up to become a mortgage company? They wanted something and they got it. Want want want.
Now in the first example the parents and in the second the mother-in-law, if they want to do that then more power to them, but it creates a generation of financially stunted individuals. Learning to save is a learned behavior that is important. This is Aesop’s fable of the ant and the grasshopper. It might be old, but it still teaches the lesson about the virtue of hard work, saving for a rainy day, and planning for the future. It is easy to spend money that you don’t have, open up your mail and you see lots of offers. It’s easy to get a mortgage, just put 3% down. It’s America, everyone that wants a house can get a house. If you can’t, just start begging like a panhandler from your siblings, your parents, or your in-laws. What counts is that you get the house and get what you want. Want want want.
Now I’m going to flip the argument around here for a moment and argue for them. The generation preceding them has put them in a tough spot. When they bought housing, the house was a much smaller multiple of their annual income. They might have had to pay a higher interest rate, but they have been able to refinance for 35 years as rates have gone down and down. After the great financial crisis homes were actually affordable for the common person for a hot minute, but then interest rates went to zero and investors started scooping them up as rentals, the older generations kept their primary home and bought a second home with the equity in the first. Quantitative easing kept assets prices rising and rising. Middle class jobs got exported out of the country. The generation that Carpenter was writing about never had a chance to get on the asset train of inflation that only went up it seems. Everyone that owned anything got rich and anyone that didn’t, didn’t.
Now that is enough of the defending, did they get a raw deal maybe? It is still America. There are jobs available everywhere. There is nothing that says you need a house, you want a house. There is nothing that says you can’t earn your way to deserving that house either. How many coffees did you buy? How many nights did you go out and eat versus saving money and eating leftovers? How many I-Phones did you buy? TechCrunch’s Haje Jan Kamps wrote about instead of buying an iPhone, what about if you had bought Apple stock instead. You would have spent about $16k or $20k in today’s dollars and that investment would be worth $147,000. You don’t need an iPhone, you want an iPhone. Want want want.
Now this is where the bouillabaisse thickens. This wanting has been rewarded for 35 years. Someone can loan a beggar money, our streets are full of people who subsistence is based on the beggar principle. The stock market has been a beggar too, when it has gotten in trouble the beggars start crying for their mama and here comes the Fed to the rescue. They want a bailout, they want lower rates, they want a dollar for some food. When you give someone what they want their toughness muscles atrophy, their savings muscles atrophy, and their independence muscles atrophy. There is nothing with a worse ROI on future productivity than giving in to want.
“Work spares us from three evils: boredom, vice, and need.” Voltaire
These examples of Carpenter wanted to live with their parents and they wanted a loan from their family, but think about the lesson that they missed out on by not having to do without and then getting their dream. Think of the average American glued to their phone or playing video games due to boredom. Drug use is now legal in a majority of our country and many imbibe. We have education systems, libraries, and opportunities that people are dying for just trying to get into this country, yet we numb and dumb our brains away. Lastly, we have need. We need the new iPhone, we need to go shopping, we need a vacation. We need shelter, food, and freedom. Yet our lives in America are so good that we confuse our needs with common wants. Want want want.
Isn’t it strange that work cures all three? Isn’t it strange that all the people that are most admired in society today are the hardest workers? Tom Brady was the first in the locker room and the last to leave. Kobe Bryant, Gwyneth Paltrow, Samuel L. Jackson and let’s not forget James Brown, the hardest working man in show business. Work is the secret and say what you will about the examples of Carpenter, they were working. The same can’t be said of the title topic for today.
Kids these days are the kamikazes. This youngest generation has perhaps looked at the futile fight of the generation preceding it and just said screw it. I’m buying crypto and NFTs and going to Beyonce the cowgirl concerts damn the cost. When Covid hit, it just solidified their entire existence. We aren’t paying rent, and we can’t be evicted. We aren’t paying our student loan, and the ice cream truck driver Joey B won’t make us, we wont pay utilities and they can’t turn off our power. We are going to spend and spend and spend because we want to. They were so obnoxious about it that they quit their jobs en masse, took vacations, day traded, bought crypto, and said to hell with this system because we have no chance so we aren’t even go to try, and they haven’t. This is where Aesop’s fable really gets good. When the grasshopper who had danced the summer away came to the ant looking for a handout that cold winter, the ant refused.
I love coming across that clip on social media of the PE class from 1962 when all the boys are doing pullups and going across the monkey bars, and there isn’t an overweight kid to be found. They list out the qualifications for physical fitness and it sounds laughable. Pull ups, push ups, the mile run, what are those? Nowadays kids are doughy, ballooned up from twinkies, fast food, and video games. What has happened? How quickly has this country been ruined?
The kamikazes are financially doughy but they got no dough. They don’t have any skills. They want to work from home yet they don’t know what they are doing. They want to have jobs that empower them or some ridiculous shit, and they want to follow their passions. Want want want. So instead they rebel and decide to live dangerously. This works for a while but remember the admiration of the trapeze artist that performs without a net, and then remember what you wore to his funeral. Part of becoming an adult is finding out you don’t always get what you want. That has been delayed until people are 40 now. The older generation might be able to help the middle cohort, but the middle cohort has nothing to give down to the kamikazes.
It is amazing how quickly when properly used, the muscles can reappear. It just takes…wait for it… work. Financial work requires work and lots of it and lots of it often crappy with a boss you don’t like and you have to save or develop new skills to get a better job or you can start a business and work for yourself. That is one thing that this kamikaze generation has been doing which is quite interesting. They are the generations of Onlyfans, social media influencers, and digital creators. Taking pictures of your nether regions or your feet and posting them online is hardly a business, getting sponsorship dollars for posting your lunch online is hardly a business, and creating Tiktok dances and posting them online is hardly a business. But it is a business. Businesses make profit and some of these people make a lot of it.
Perhaps they will find their way, but when the youth of today want something and can’t get it, that becomes a problem. When the market wants something and doesn’t get it becomes a problem, and when the people that usually ride to rescue are unable to help anyone, Houston we have a problem. The US government spending endangers that ability to help people. I have to say that not helping someone and allowing them to grow their muscles would help. Businesses that aren’t profitable need to grow their muscles or go away, companies that only exist on credit need to grow their muscles or go away, and governments that print money they don’t have need to grow their muscles or go away. All exist because someone wanted something before, they worked for it. This is the macro and the kamikaze is the micro.
I find it amazing how people adapt. During the Great Depression, people traveled by train as hobos looking for work. During the 1970’s people wore sweaters and never touched a thermostat because heat cost money. Maybe these kamikazes are adapting to a new generation of digital property like NFT’s and Bitcoin and us old dinosaurs are really the endangered species. I will be the first one to actually try and help them by not giving them want they want. So if these kamikazes grasshoppers come knocking on my door this winter I will not help them, not even a little bit. I will tell them to go ask the guy that paid to look at their feet.
Sincerely Yours,
C Thomas Printer
On this date in history… 52 years ago to be exact, President Richard Nixon visited China opening the doors and the markets of the Communist country to the western world.
Also born on this date…. The single greatest villain in cinematic history, thespian extraordinaire Alan Rickman.
Thank you for listening today and you can find all of our articles and more on our website cthomasprinter.com.