The Millennials

Did you buy that new Zoomie 3000, that you just had to have to impress your compatriots? Did it cost about $36,000 financed for 72 months? Did you ever take an economics class in school? Did the car salesman ask you how much you could afford monthly?
Then after all this noise, you’ll get a visit from a repossessor at a most inconvenient time.

Record 7 million Americans are 3 months behind on car payments, a red flag for economy

A record 7 million Americans are 90 days or more behind on their auto loan payments, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York reported Tuesday, even more than during the wake of the financial crisis era.

Economists warn this is a red flag. Despite the strong economy and low unemployment rate, many Americans are struggling to pay their bills.

“The substantial and growing number of distressed borrowers suggests that not all Americans have benefited from the strong labor market,” economists at the New York Fed wrote in a blog post.

A car loan is typically the first payment people make because a vehicle is critical to getting to work, and someone can live in a car if all else fails. When car loan delinquencies rise, it is a sign of significant duress among low-income and working-class Americans. [snip]

People who are three months or more behind on their car payments often lose their vehicle, making it even more difficult to get to work, the doctor’s office or other critical places.

The New York Fed said there were over a million more “troubled borrowers” at the end of 2018 than there were in 2010, when unemployment hit 10 percent and the auto loan delinquency rate peaked. Today, unemployment is 4 percent, and many more Americans have jobs, yet a significant number of people cannot pay their car loan. [snip]

Auto loans surged in the past several years as car sales kept growing year after year, hitting a record high in 2016 of 17.5 million vehicles sold in the United States. Overall, many borrowers have strong credit scores and repay their loans, but the auto industry has suffered from high defaults among so-called “subprime” borrowers with credit scores under 620 on an 800-point scale.

The share of auto loan borrowers who were three months behind on their payments peaked at 5.3 percent in late 2010. The share is slightly lower now – 4.5 percent – because the total number of borrowers has risen so much in the past several years. Still, economists are concerned the rate has been climbing steadily since 2016 even though unemployment fell to its lowest level in almost half a century and the number of people impacted is far greater now. [snip]

New car ads are rife with the latest and fastest buggy on the lots. Smoking tires, racing around hairpin turns and complete with the eye candy ogling your suave persona. Why one can even make a complected Masse shot on a pool table and be driving at slightly less than the speed of light before the 9 ball is sunk.

Interesting that the car ads never show one tied up in 18 mph traffic on the quotidian commute because some bozo needed to text his chippie while braking the sound barrier.

Reality is that one can’t get to the destination much faster than they can in a seven year old conveyance. However you might attract the attention of that spectacle wearing cutie majoring in economics. That would help with paying off your college debt and prevent wearing out shoe leather.

Digital “I see you”

If you are, like most Mellinnials, addicted to your digital life, you are oart of the Government ‘Digital Archipelago. You believe that the (any) government is benign. If so then what color is the sky in your world.

Oh, it WAS a “test” all right, just not what you thought was being tested…from Rico

Understand that I am not a Luddite.

– I use technology that works for me [e-mail; internet], but try to avoid technology that enslaves me and puts me into the digital control grid of Big Brother [read: the digital gulag of any device called “smart”].

With the understanding that anything that can be digitized is databased, but without digressing into facial recognition, biometric data, shared social media information, and the implications of China’s “social credit” program as a digital governmental control mechanism, we’ll discuss here only that FEMA test alert from the other day.

The FEMA Alert Test.
– It WAS a “test” but less a test of the emergency broadcast system than of the ability to know where you are, and who you are.

– The implicit message is “we can find you.”

Doubt me? Here’s how it works:

– FEMA has co-opted the E911 chip in your smart phone and can access it at will.

– This gives them access to everything on your phone (phone logs, social media, texts, e-mails, photo’s) and control of every function on your phone (camera, microphone, etc), plus your location.

– You cannot disable, block, uninstall, or opt out.

Such a deal!

– How “smart” is it to trade convenience for digital slavery?

Yeah, living in the “SMART” digital world isn’t as nice as the announcer tells you it is, when they want you to be on smart’ circuitry. The power of the government can only be expressed in levels of pain.

Think not? Ask any individual from a Soviet Bloc country who is now free of them. Ask about living the Gulag lifestyle..
Ah, they’re just making it up, right Snowflake?

Here goes another candidate’s chance…

…at a SCOTUS appointment.

When will they ever learn to avoid a #MeToo moment.

Idiot’s Corner

The likes of Ms. Cortez and other communists running around with a coterie of Snowflakes in an adoring train, can’t explain this:

All their gibberish about how wonderful Communism is pilloried on reality’s post.

The Millennials

For whatever reason, this group cannot figure out that there is no difference twixt Communists and Fascists. It has to be due to their ‘education‘.

Socialism, what difference does it make?…from Rico

What difference does it make?
– They’re ALL “Socialists”…
Nazi’s (National Socialists) were not Marxists, but:
– Marxists are Socialists
– Nazi’s are Socialists
– Democrats are Socialists

Different gang colors and insignia, but they are ALL Socialists.

– Who in their right mind would follow Socialism, much less vote for a Socialist? Oh, guess I answered my own question…

The Millennials

With the idiocy expressed by the Snowflakes, Millennials and the other outre groups, one has a difficult time understanding just how stupid these groups are. There must be nads in their logic circuits. Looking around the world, all examples of Socialism exhibit failure. Cuba, Zimbabwe, Venezuela and a host of African countries.

These fools always envision the top photo, never the true existence of the bottom photo.

When Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez touts Democrat Socialism one has to wonder how her belies the idea that everyone is equal, equally poor.

How she’ll afford all that when her programs will cost about this.

When asked about these discrepancies, the questioner becomes a racist, bigot, homophobe or more foul a person, a Capitalist.
For someone who purportedly has a degree in economics, she should have a solid answer to how paying for this is possible. Of course the real answer is you can never pay this freight.

The Millennials

Today, preventing crime is something all need to do. Anti-theft devices help in that goal.

Idiot’s Corner

Given the levels of comprehension shown by the ejectees from the educational institutions, The lede on this article really isn’t surprising.

Americans grapple with recognizing facts in news stories: Pew survey

Only a quarter of U.S. adults in a recent survey could fully identify factual statements – as opposed to opinion – in news stories, the Pew Research Center found in a study released on Monday.

The survey comes amid growing concerns about so-called fake news spread on the internet and social media. The term generally refers to fabricated news that has no basis in fact but is presented as being factually accurate.

Facebook Inc , Alphabet Inc’s Google and other tech companies have recently come under scrutiny for failing to promptly tackle the problem of fake news as more Americans consume news on social media platforms.

The main portion of Pew’s survey polled 5,035 adult Americans aged 18 and above in February and March. The study was intended to determine if respondents could differentiate between factual information and opinion statements in news stories.

Participants were given five factual statements such as “spending on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid make up the largest portion of the U.S. federal budget,” and five opinion statements such as “democracy is the greatest form of government.” They were asked to identify which ones were factual and which were opinions.

Only 26 percent were able to correctly identify all five factual statements. On opinions, about 35 percent were able to correctly identify all five statements. Roughly a quarter got most or all wrong in identifying facts and opinions, the research showed. [snip]

“There is a striking difference in certain Americans in distinguishing what are factual statements and what are not and that depends on one’s level of digital savviness, political savviness,” Amy Mitchell, director of journalism research at Pew Research Center, said in an interview.

The study also found that when Americans call a statement “factual” they overwhelmingly also think it is accurate. They tend to disagree with factual statements they incorrectly label as opinions, Pew said.

The research showed Republicans and Democrats were also more likely to think news statements are factual when the statements appeal to their side, even if the statements were opinions.

The largest part of this problem arises from the fact that most younger persons are taught what to think not how to think. Regardless of our political biases (we all have them) one needs to know the difference twix beliefs and reality. Leaders in the military learn rapidly to discern between what someone would like to do and what they actually CAN do.

To quote Dirty Harry, “A man has to know his limits”.

The Millennials

Every day there is something in the news that belongs in the humor column. Today is no exception.

More than half of Millennials expect to be millionaires someday, according to a new study

Millennials expect to make it big some day, with more than half reporting that they believe they will eventually become millionaires, according to a new study.

Despite having crushing student loans (20 percent never expect to pay them off), credit card and other debt, people born between 1982 and 2000 share a confidence when it comes to their financial outlook.

‘Young people are optimistic about the future,’ said JJ Kinahan, chief strategist for TD Ameritrade, in a statement on the company’s new report. ‘On average, survey respondents expect to land a job in their chosen field and be completely financially independent by age 25.

That’s despite the fact that 17 percent still can’t say they’re financially independent from their parents; most report getting cut off once they’ve moved out of the house.

Perhaps the optimism is due to Millennials graduating in record rates – with the overall college completion rates rising nearly 4 percent in 2017, according to a report by the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center.  [snip]

Snorting condoms does this to the brain.

These individuals must live in a state where it is legal to smoke a lot of dope.
Or the Federal Reserve will debase the dollar more than now to where a million dollars is equivalent to $15/hour, ergo about $30,000 per annum.
This batch cannot be the ones touting Socialism as the “New Normal”.

Idiocracy

The author of “Life imitates Art” nailed it to the wall.

Since the educational ideas took hold after WWII, there has been a decease in the requirements for scholarship plus the diminution of history as a necessary understanding of our how and why.

The balance of this article is behind a paywall. I have no intentions of enriching the NY Times.

Dumb and dumber: why we’re getting less intelligent

The IQ scores of young people have begun to fall after rising steadily since the Second World War, according to the first authoritative study of the phenomenon.

The decline, which is equivalent to at least seven points per generation, is thought to have started with the cohort born in 1975, who reached adulthood in the early Nineties.

Scientists say that the deterioration could be down to changes in the way maths and languages are taught, or to a shift from reading books to spending time on television and computers. [snip]

One cannot help but notice that those who are coming to teaching now are products of that same education that reduced the IQ in the first place.

The old adage ‘That you can’t know what you don’t know applies across the educational spectrum. Think about it; now can you teach with those conditions.