show the street some respect.

It would be great if one could actually document the % of trustafarians that actually live in Brooklyn. This concept is probably one of the most heaviest bandied-about lazy thinkin' rants, but I have yet to encounter it. The folks I run with work hard, have decent jobs and live tight -- no hidden funding there.

I think it's usually the case of sour grapes when the very competitive NYC environment is very much a sizing up the Joneses place. Get educated, get a job (no, a career) you are passionate about and work hard -- the fine livin' comes. I make more money than my parents put together, so my coop-ownin', gentrifyin' success is due to one factor only -- me. Undergrad and grad school? Paid for by me. The three bedroom coop? Bought by me.

I live in a building with 14 other apartments full of folks who have moved in within the past year, and every one of them have done it themselves (I'm Board prez, so I've seen the financials). There isn't a trust fund nor a check from mom & dad or an investment banker in the bunch. Non-profit workers, public employees, costume designers, maintenance workers, social workers, teachers, journalists, nutritionists, etc., etc. -- that's the true make up of Prospect Heights today. I've met a number of the Daily Heights posters, and the same story rings through. These people work hard and live mightily.

I showed up in Fort Greene 13 years ago with no job and a Jeep full of everything I owned in the world. I sweet-talked a landlord into renting to me on a handshake and a look-in-the-eye promise that I would be employed in a month. Two weeks later I was well-employed and I've never looked back.

As a good friend of mine says: "The harder I work, the luckier I get."

As much as Gus and the Tom's scene drives me nuts, I think he's the model of success -- passion, service, dedication, commitment, focus and love of what one does to make money.

Keep complaining about everyone else, or get off your rear end and make yourself successful. And hey, you might actually be a happier person in the end.

Sheisty?

I do not think that word means what you think it means.

brooklynpotter wrote: ok, can i, yet once again, ask what is wrong with having parents who help you out? why is this such a dreadful and awful thing?

Well... it may make those who got little financial help from their parents a little jealous.

brooklynpotter wrote: (mind you, i bought my apartment with the money i got when half my family died in a period of 6 weeks, so i guess that would count as "helping me out"... by dying.)

This touches on a serious issue for middle-class parents who are 55-70. Having accumulated enormous wealth, particularly in real estate, at the expense of our generation, by a combination of factors including high inflation after they took out mortgages, they have two choices: transfer some of that wealth before they die, or after.

I'll try and explain. In the late 60s, a single middle class wage could support getting a mortgage and starting a family, which is what my parents did. For two decades, inflation paid off the mortgage by causing its value to dwindle to nothing, while asset prices and nominal wages rose (even if real wages declined). On that one middle class income, my parents owned their large inner suburban house outright by the 80s, and by the 90s, one house each. We're now back to low inflation and extremely high prices for houses which are owned outright by baby boomers but are very hard to buy into for the young. Everyone has to live somewhere, and the net effect has been a massive, though temporary, transfer of wealth from our generation to the previous generation in the form of large equity and high housing prices -- to those who owned before inflation and the run up in housing prices, and from those who are starting to own now but face cripplingly high entry prices and large mortgages to do so. Since they can't take it with them, that equity has to transfer back to the young; the only question is whether that happens at death, or whether they assist their children into what they took for granted a little earlier.

BigGuy wrote: This is one of the many reaons that we still need death.

I'm very anti-death.

devincf wrote: I recommend everybody do what I'm doing - move the fuck out of this ruined neighborhood.

We'll all miss you so much.

So Dr. J... i guess you are saying that everybody needs a bit of help from their parents these days to live like (or amid simlar circumstances) their parents?
(And while I've got an economist on the line - I'd love to know why falling bunds have been pressuring Treasuries this week... seriously)