Millennials prioritize entertainment and free time more than boomers as well. Millennials also start families later in life.
These are the values boomers taught that money doesn't buy happiness. So this is not really shocking to see that they are not in the same place monetarily.
I would view this is at least some measure of success. The boomers were able to teach a value system they believed was better than their life.
All the comments show my point. These are the values that were taught by the boomers. Ask a boomer, were they ready for a family when they got one? No, but it was the thing to do, so they did it, made it work, and life was hard. Go back and look at the old childhood photos and you'll see what I mean. These people clearly weren't ready for kids in our modern sense of being ready.
This is a quite complex subject, but the simple view is priorities. There is a priority of short term thinking with millennials focused around instant gratification. That's not to say that it's wrong but it is a priority which has and effect on how life plays out. An easy example of this is how everything is described as a "hack" and not a "grind".
Boomers, whether they knew it or not, were more long term focused. Part of it was a function of the world of the time. You had to wait for the Sears catalogue to come in the mail. You don't have a credit card so you make layaway payments etc... You just had to focus farther out. They scarified a lot of short term and gained a long term benefit.
Sadly most, including this article, equate education with motivation. It's not the same thing. Going to college because you don't know what to do next and mom says go doesn't mean that the education will give you a leg up in life.
The internet has shown us how wonderful instant access to the world's information can be, and we've decided that everything is better with internet. Its an extremely coherent point to make, in my opinion.
Agreed. Pre-school costs $15k/year where I live. There are an awful lot of careers in which that would be a tough pill to swallow. Maybe one parent stays at home with the kid... but then you're a single income family and housing prices are no joke either.
I think the point is to be sarcastic. Everytime somebody points out that people are worse off, any fact used to support that argument is immediately used to support the thesis that in fact everything is better.
Less money - more spending - good, or as GP put it "Millennials prioritize entertainment and free time more than boomers as well"
From most graphs I get the impression this is the situation. Since Obama came to office there has been the GFC. I think it would be fair to say that US employment has recovered about half the losses it endured during the GFC, taking all statistics together. That does not, to me, sound like a good result at all, and at least for me, is a big part of the explanation that Trump got elected. For most people employment is worse than when Obama came to power (of course he should probably not be blamed for the GFC, but still, he's got the top job. He bears some responsibility)
Similar argument: More debt - more spending - good
Those sorts of arguments. Truth is the economics for the vast majority of the world's population have steadily worsened since about 2000-2001 (worldwide average). Silicon Valley and in fact most huge cities are an exception.
It's not exactly by choice. Most millenials (myself included) would love to be in better financial condition. But we carry more debt and make less money than our parents did despite being better educated.
We emphasize entertainment and free time because it's all we have left in otherwise dreary economic circumstances.
I thought my (Millennials) generation was born in 1992 or afterwards. So I was about to challenge your 'mid thirties' assertion. Wikipedia also has a wide range of start and stop birth years, ranging from 1976 to 1996 as the start birth year. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennials#Date_and_age_range...
Imo, there's a sandwich date range from around 1976 to 1982 where you either identify as Gen X or Gen Y/millennial.
I'm someone in that gap and identify much more closely with millennials than with the Gen X slackers, though a lot of my childhood friends also in that gap identify more with Gen X.
Perhaps it's a combination of my job, that i feel i grew up with (along with?) the internet because my parents were pretty fast in getting connected, and that i have older siblings who are very much Gen X as in leaving college during very difficult job times in the early 90s, and I never shared their experiences.
I'm riiight on the cusp; born in '82, graduated in 2000. My wife was born in '81, graduated in '99. We're definitely more millenial than GenX - my older siblings (born in '70, '72, '75) are total GenX'ers. The GenX'ers had computers as tweens/teens, so they definitely grew up as all this tech stuff was developing, but I've literally never lived in a house without a computer. Quite literally: my parents bought a ZX-81 for my older siblings the same week I was born.
We both have younger siblings who were born in '84 (graduated in high school 2002). They're the oldest of what I'd call "true millenials" - I think one of the big distinguishing things is that those who graduated after 2000 had Facebook in college, whereas I didn't. Sure, there was ICQ, IRC, various web forums, Myspace and Friendster and all that stuff, but it wasn't quite the same; those didn't have nearly the reach of Facebook, and most of the people I interacted with pre-facebook I didn't know IRL. I used Facebook to keep in touch with College friends after we all graduated and did the whole post-college-diaspora thing, but my brother and his friends used Facebook constantly as a key part of their social life.
Additionally, cell phones were much more prevalent for the "true millenials" - my brother and I both got cell phones in '03, and for him it was a core part of his college experience.
That's pretty much exactly what I said; those graduating HS after 2000 didn't have FB in college. I graduated high school in 2000, college in '04, didn't have facebook till after graduation. My brother graduated HS in 2002, college in 2006, facebooked all the time.
Facebook as a determiner is an interesting one. I'm also on the cusp but delayed uni by a few years, and so Facebook popped up while I was at uni and changed everything.
If for no for no other reason, to become more knowledgeable. I have to be honest, the only reason I went to university was because I could do that or try to find a job during the Great Recession with only a highschool diploma. Wouldn't it be great if college was for people who genuinely wanted to learn information, and not just buy a $20,000 employment certificate?
It does for particular members of society, but not necessarily for society as a whole. Like, if the best half of the jobs always went to the half of society that went to college, but college did literally nothing but waste your time for four years, you'd want to go to college and college would not increase your generation's overall wealth.
> Education does help boost incomes. But the median college-educated millennial with student debt is only earning slightly more than a baby boomer without a degree did in 1989.
I don't have an opinion one way or the other, but many people feel that "millennials" is an overused term in the media by journalists that either don't have a deep grasp of the subject or are just trying to get clicks. Or that it's stupid to divide people into arbitrary generations then assign them a bunch of personality characteristics. Etc Etc.
Similar to how "the cloud" is used so often it is just a meaningless buzzword. You've probably heard of the cloud-to-butt extension[0]. This is its less-famous sibling.
Note that even in countries where the absolute amount of money is better, the stuff on this article still applies.
I am from Brazil, and many boomers told me when I was young how awesome I was to be young, because I was living in a golden age where I didn't had to walk uphill both ways to school, could have computer, and whatnot.
But it is me that envy them now, I am 29, have zero income, lots of debt, and own no assets (not even a bicycle).
The same applies to almost all my friends and aquaintances, and even so, the "almost" is because one of them is an absolute exception (he was already rich, and made a hit game, his game is probably on top20 most sold on Steam right now...), and some of the humble and smart ones decided to ignore the "adults" advice, don't go to college and deliberately choose professions seen in bad light in the social sense (construction, plumbing, car mechanic, CNC operator, security guard...)
The few friends I have that have families, did it by accident (ie: accidental pregnancy), and all of them are unemployed, and their spouses (when they actually have one, some are single parents) are unemployed too, the "least worse" couple are the ones that have moderately rich parents, and they have both sides of the family giving their child the stuff the child needs.
And the thing is, although this is mostly about my country (Brazil), I have lots of friends outside Brazil too, that are also in this situation, one guy I know is an absolute crazy coding genius (And his game is rumored to have inspired No Man's Sky) and he is 40, and also childless, and own only a very old (20+ years I think) car, I have some Canadian friends also with problems like that, I know people that worked in AAA game studios around the planet and still failed to make enough money to pay student debts and start a family.
To be honest, the situation just feel hopeless, sometimes I get myself with the intruding unwanted thought of wishing someone would start WWIII just to see if at least life would be less boring. And from what I am seeing in the "mood" in social media and elections worldwide, I am not alone in this...
> I think a lot of the alt-right obsession comes from this as well.
Ironically the alt-right seems to be anti-war (at least when it comes to war with other superpowers, namely Russia), but there is definitely nihilistic tendencies within the movement. Sort of a "globalism sucks, so let's kill it with fire" thing...
If you're that bored why not start a revolution along with your friends who are in the same boat? Why wait for someone else (politicians) to start a global war, send you and your friends to death and also get rich in the process?
> But it is me that envy them now, I am 29, have zero income, lots of debt, and own no assets (not even a bicycle).
I have a hard time feeling sorry for people who write such essays. You are clearly a talented writer. Are you unable to start some kind of a business and hustle for 14 hours a day?? Why do you have time to be here and not there?
I will bluntly state that if you have the kind of writing talent that OP displayed, and you cannot afford a bicycle, you are simply not applying yourself.
That level of skill alone could easily net you $1500/month+ on various writing services (at an extremely conservative 2000 words/day * $0.03/word * 20 days/month). Nobody said it'd be fun or easy, but hey, you'd at least have a bicycle after you got paid.
The "complex, multidimensional problem on a single, linear axis" is the economy - mismanagement of same over the last eight years results in where we're at. It should improve going forward... :-)
It's because the barrier to entry into employment rises because the overall productive sector is - despite all the horror stories - quite effective at producing. They don't really need your help.
My father, born in 1930, had to perform manual labor on farms because that was how stuff got produced. There was no barrier to entry. He then worked until retirement on mechanical phone switches, which are now beyond obsolete.
Yes. Most two parent families require both parents to work, whereas in the past most middle class families required only one parent to work while the other would take care of the children. "progress"
I cannot say I'm very impressed with the article. I could pick out a number of millenials who are doing better than their parents at the same age. But I wouldn't use that to argue that everything is okay.
One thing that has stuck out at me has been the ways in which people have money drained from them. I think there is a huge student loan problem where young people were "sold" a crappy education. But setting that aside for the moment there is a huge difference in lifestyle that I see in people; going out to eat more, paying for basic entertainment, communication charges, credit, and transportation.
Something that seems to be missed on people is that debt is very corrosive to your future wealth. People who carry a balance on a credit card, month after month, may feel like its "okay" because they always have enough to at least pay the minimum but it isn't. When they don't take the time to each bag lunches, breakfast and dinner at home they are sending more of their money out into the world and out of their future. When the world tells them every car has to have backup cameras it means they are going to have bigger car payments. Coffee habits, in app purchases, cable TV instead of free over the air TV.
Some people budget badly, some don't. But before you slam an entire "generation" I think it makes sense to look a bit deeper at the forces at play.
You are slamming an entire generation by claiming that the problem is spending irresponsibly on frivolous things. I don't blame you - it must feel great to feel that the problems of the world are rooted in others being less virtuous than you.
The trouble is, my generation faces lower real wages and higher housing costs, and those effects are so large that Starbucks habits are basically noise in comparison.
That narrative doesn't pat you on the back for your superior discipline, so you're not impresssed with it, and you pivot to anecdata about the moral weakness of kids these days.
>> those effects are so large that Starbucks habits are basically noise in comparison
Right, because spending $1500-2000/year on Starbucks and another $2000-$4000+/year on McDonald's and other takeout for 2-3 meals a day is "noise". Consumerism is a very real thing today. There are lower middle class people who blow $30-50 a day on Starbucks, energy drinks, going out for lunch, and ordering pizza for dinner. Throw in alcohol, cigarettes, and/or weed.
You can talk about wages and the price of a home all you want. Nobody 20-40 years ago threw 30-60%+ of their net pay away on daily impulse/routine purchases. Now it's extremely common.
For the pool of people who work 40+ hours a week, while not spending money on any of the stupid things listed above, who still find it hard to make ends meet - those are the people I sympathize with. However, even many people who claim to be wise with their spending like to think that their $7/day Starbucks is just a "small indulgence". $7/day * 5 work days a week * 50 weeks a year = $1750/year. Make it $9-10 dollars a day, for $2500/year, to add a muffin to your morning coffee.
I completely agree here. I genuinely feel bad for those who do work hard and try their best. But that is not the case for most of the people I personally know.
I really get tired of hearing people complain about low wages and being broke, but aren't willing on doing anything about it. Ranting on Facebook from their $700 - $800 Iphone while drinking a $5 coffee.
I've worked really hard for everything I have. Late nights on my own, studying to better myself. Missing opportunities to hang out with friends, concerts, etc. But, at the end of the day, I chose to focus on my skills, knowledge, and career. So, when I see these same people complaining, I feel like they are degrading the time I spent and luxuries I gave up to get to where I am.
I forgot about the phone. My sister and her husband fell for that trap. They went further into debt and locked themselves into an expensive family plan for 3 years for their new iPhones.
We live in a really odd time. The concept of money is abstracted away in virtual credit cards - at amounts our parents never had access to. We buy computers and cell phones - things our parents never had. The very idea of spending that kind of money for what you get in return would have been entirely inconceivable for their generation. Today, these things are considered as necessary essentials rather than luxuries.
Good on you for your hard work. I can attest to the fact that it is extremely difficult to ignore conventional modern consumerism. It took me a suicidal "early life crisis" 4 years ago - at the age of 27 - to "get it". I went from being severely in debt (no student loans, just a voluntarily repossessed car and maxed out credit cards), to responsibly paying off every penny. For the first time in my life, I actually have a savings account with some money put away. My spending habits are still not ideal, but I'm doing far better now than I ever did before I hit bottom.
Putting anecdata in spreadsheet form doesn't fix the problem. If you look at spending data people are putting less into things like food and clothing and transportation than ever before in part because housing and medical costs are out of control. That isn't some made up feel good story pulled out of the air, it is solid verifiable data from government agencies that collect this data as part of tracking people and transaction for tax collection and other reasons.
Millennial here. I just got the property assessment notice on my modest 1 bedroom condo. The "value" of it has gone up by $200,000 (around 30%) in the last two years according to the assessment office. So I can expect a nice fat tax bill later this year.
The boomer generation, in full control of politics my entire adult life and for the foreseeable future, has made real estate in my city into a ponzi scheme, and I don't ever expect to live in a house here.
What I can expect is to shoulder the tax burden of a large population of people who have not saved nearly enough for retirement, are leveraged against their massively overpriced properties, and are projected to live for a very, very long time. And the data shows that quite clearly.
> Between 1982 and 2010, mortgage debt grew from $99 billion to $994 billion (in current dollars), while consumer debt increased from $48 billion to $460 billion. [1]
> The average market value of an owned dwelling quadrupled, from $71,800 to $303,500 (current dollars) between 1982 and 2008. [1]
> The indebtedness of Canadian households increased from $147 billion in 1982 to $1,454 billion by 2010—in current dollars. [1]
> More than 1.5 million families who have a main provider between 45 and 64 had no private pension savings in 1999, the agency reported Friday. These households will have to rely almost solely on public retirement plans Old Age Security and the Canada or Quebec Pension Plans. [2]
>What I can expect is to shoulder the tax burden of a large population of people who have not saved nearly enough for retirement
Them saving more wouldn't help much. Saving has a counter-party, someone who gets real goods and services now in exchange for repaying the debt later. Who's the counter-party for the retirees' savings? Obviously it can't be the retirees, since they're busy, you know, being retired.
What'd increased saving would cash out to is shoveling money into repaying education loans held by pension funds that pay the boomers, rather than paying taxes that fund retirement programs. It doesn't mean you don't support retiring boomers, it just means that you get better compensation today for doing so.
It's unrealized earnings. They don't have $200k to spend on taxes, and if they sell the home they still need to buy (or rent) in an area that's very expensive to live. That extra tax burden is not something most people plan on (smart or not, sometimes these booms are more unexpected than others).
Some people just want a place to live close to work/whatever that doesn't have high maintenance (e.g. rent/mortgage/taxes).
In a "hot" city it's trivial to get very modest places that have monthly tax bills more than rent is on a similar sized place in the mid-tier NFL city I grew up in. That's a lot of cashflow to be burning - even if the investment is appreciating faster than the burn. It eventually forces you to sell and move, when your goal was not an investment but a place to live and make a home.
This is nonsensical. I have to pay that extra tax NOW. That's real money that I have to pay out. An extra 30% on something I nominally own? That's not real. I can't pay the taxes with that. What should I do to get that extra 30%? Take out an extra mortgage on that alleged increase in house value? Sell it and move to a worse house in a worse neighbourhood, somewhere I don't really want to live that I can still afford the taxes?
I bought a house that I wanted to live in, that I could afford the taxes on, and now I can't afford the taxes through no fault of my own. There is no solace to be taken in the fact that if I sold it, I might get 30% more than I paid. I don't want the money. If I wanted the money, I wouldn't have bought the house to live in, in the first place. I want what I bought two years ago; the house I could afford to live in. 30% increase in alleged value is of no use to me, and it's costing me money.
The thinking is fine. The thinking is identifying a problem. Prop 13 was wrongfooted and created a new set of problems. We shouldn't ignore a problem just because someone else once royally screwed up a solution to it.
Fair enough, my goal was to respectfully look at the number of additional expense items that are available today which were not part of the "Baby Boomer" menu.
Since I'm an engineer and have been since the 80's and a hiring manager for much of the last 15 years I can tell you that the starting wage for an electrical engineer or a computer programmer with a four year degree is around $85,000 (that was IBM's "standard offer" regardless of geography for a New College Grad with a 4 year degree). My starting wage in 1984 was $25,500 (which was Intel's standard offer for New College Grads with a 4 year degree). According to (https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl) my salary in 1984 would be $60,000 today. That suggests to me that for my job and education there has been a 42% increase in salary.
I certainly agree that where I live (the Bay Area) the price of housing has outpaced that increase in salary, especially in home ownership. That appears to be stabilizing a bit as additional housing comes on line but it remains to be seen if that truly reflects what it costs.
I also got married to an engineer and so we were both bringing home "engineering" salaries and that gave us the ability to get into a house in 1988 with a 12% adjustable mortgage rate.
So what does this anecdote tell us? Not a whole lot. Engineers make more today out of college than they did in the 80's. Not really a huge surprise.
I think Internet access is essential today, at its cheapest its probably $30/month, more if you combine it with a phone. That is a cost I didn't have to pay. But its an example of things that people today do have to pay.
Informational value? Not high.
The truth is that not all people born between 1985 and 1995 make 20% less than their parents in 2016 than people who were born from 1955 to 1965 made in 1986. Some make more, some make less, some make about the same. How many? That would be an interesting thing to know but this article doesn't tell us how to understand that. It picks out some anecdotes, sprinkles in some common boogeymen (student loan debt) and implies we're all headed for the crapper.
So it didn't impress me very much.
PS. Don't dismiss the coffee habit out of hand. $500 a year compounded at 4% a year over 40 years (21 -> 61) is a bit more than $50,000 you don't get to spend in retirement.
They don't particularly show their work there, but it is believable that they are generating the various analyses from the Survey of Consumer Finances done by the Fed (aka decent statistics).
Sure Internet is $30, but it replaces a whole bundle of other services. Back in 1984 the cost to develop a couple rolls of film and make some long-distance phone calls would easily equal today's internet bill.
The cost of education and health care is what is crushing today's generation, not backup cameras, Starbucks, and iPhones.
It compounds, though. You can't tackle your debt if your other cash outflows are too high. iPhone, Starbucks, sodas, cable TV (versus Hulu + Netflix + Amazon, which many have in addition to cable TV), that's 2-4k/year. If your debt is $100k or less, that's 2-4% of the principle that you can pay off as extra in one year of living more modestly, which means you can get your home and other things much earlier.
> The trouble is, my generation faces lower real wages and higher housing costs, and those effects are so large that Starbucks habits are basically noise in comparison.
No, that Starbucks habit isn't noise. I consumed Starbucks coffee daily after Christmas a few years back (got a lot of gift cards for them for some reason). It was $2/day for a cup of coffee. $10/week. Continued through the year, $500 (holidays and such mean I won't commute, vacations I may still indulge). That's 2 car payments if you buy a modest car. That's a significant chunk of your rent, possibly all of it, if you're not in NYC or SF or somewhere equally absurdly expensive.
It's like a code smell. If you're consuming pricy drinks on a frequent basis, what else are you doing that you could do for a fraction of the price yourself? Look at every other $1/day habit you have. Sodas? Modest 1/day habit (along with being unhealthy) if you don't buy them at the grocery store is around $2/day (bottle or fountain). That's another $500/year. Netflix + Hulu + Spotify + HBO Now + Amazon Prime + Cable? Do you really need all of them? I didn't, kept Netflix + Amazon Prime and saved $1200/year, more than a rent payment.
There, between coffee, soda, and media, I've saved > $2000. If your income is low, as this article discusses, this is a significant percentage of your income. 4% if your income is only $50k. Higher if you consider your net-income on that and not your gross-income. You still want coffee? I'm in an espresso club at work, 8 people, espresso twice a day, costs me $20/year for my contribution. Drop the sodas, they aren't healthy for you anyways, drink one once a week or so as a treat.
Examine your spending, really look at it. You'll find that you likely have a lot of places where you "leak" money, because it's just a coffee, or just a soda, or just a cocktail. Then it doesn't become an occasional spending thing, like once a week or month. But more frequent, daily or several times a week. Your money is gone and you don't know where it went.
On the question of "why is Alice poor and Bob well-off" a difference of $10k on the income side is 5x more interesting than a difference of $2k on the expense side, no?
But more generally. "Do you really need this?" is the right question to ask about the expense, effort, and unpleasantness you tolerate from the overhead in life, such as education, work, housing, transportation, sustenance, etc. And yes, you probably need at least the minimum viable product in each category, and the savings to continue purchasing it during unemployment and retirement.
For the rest, I'm much more interested in, "is this worth it?" Good food, books, TV, movies, concerts, theater, and yes, Sunday afternoons at the coffee shop are what all that overhead is for, particularly when shared with people whose company I enjoy.
If I need to find an additional $2k, I will pull it from overheard (be slightly less picky about my next apartment, or put up with a less pleasant commute). Not cut all the enjoyment from my life.
I use (and love) You Need a Budget. My entertainment category is about 5% of my take-home, with savings of about 25%, and I'm satisfied with this. (Of course, I am extremely fortunate to be early in life with a great education, high income, and good health).
Housing costs are probable twice as much... unless you live in CA...then they are 10 times as much. Imagine buying that ranch in the Oakland hills for 70k in the 80s that's worth 800k. There is the ability of these same boomers to fight new construction. Oh and prop 12! Why not defer all the taxes until the sale of the house!? Boomers in CA living in 800k houses paying taxes frozen at 70k. Awesome deal.
I cannot say I'm very impressed with the article. I could pick out a number of millenials who are doing better than their parents at the same age. But I wouldn't use that to argue that everything is okay.
Yeah, anecdotes usually don't stand up well to statistics.
No, I mean that the ability to make an "affordable" car is hampered by excessive regulation. In real dollars an entry level car today is 18% more expensive than the same car in the 80's primarily due to additional safety equipment and a lack of 'economy' SKUs. For example, try to buy a car with only the required safety equipment, manual transmission, manual locks/windows etc. Very hard to do unless you go out of your way.
There are also less than 1/3 the deaths per car mile traveled in the USA today compared to 1980, and cars today produce dramatically less air pollution.
Herein lies the rub: carrying debt to maximize life now can potentially destroy your future, but the alternative is minimizing life now to improve your potential (and non-guaranteed) future later. It would be a real shame to avoid living the life you want now in hopes of an awesome future, only for the future to hand you a really shitty hand (I.e. Medical bills vaporizing all of your wealth)
I think finding balance is key.
Side note: I'm 29 and have credit card and student loan debt. I'm not proud of it and paying it back is inconvenient, but I'm able to afford the burden at the moment and am enjoying a higher quality of life because of it. I also contribute to my 401k and chose funds with low management overhead, so my future self isn't being completely left out to dry. I literally wouldn't have been on the career track I'm on now had I not taken student loans.
>carrying debt to maximize life now can potentially destroy your future, but the alternative is minimizing life now to improve your potential (and non-guaranteed) future later.
Isn't this just called "work" or "discipline"? You put up with the drudgery of effort because you want to be able to enjoy the benefits of your labor later. Everything works that way. Not going to get around it.
You're right, though: there is absolutely a balance to be struck. I think the parent's point is that the balance is not being struck well by many. My POV is that that's true, and that cultural and economic forces that encourage this imbalance make it difficult for your average Millennial to avoid.
> carrying debt to maximize life now can potentially destroy your future, but the alternative is minimizing life now to improve your potential (and non-guaranteed) future later.
Define maximize and minimize. Is a life lived "to the fullest" worth it, when you find yourself frequently fighting off panic attacks as you realize you have to work until you die? Is a life spent maxing out a couple retirement accounts (IRA, 401k for most of us in the US), along with cooking your own food, and traveling to more modest hotels and always in the cheap airline seats really minimized? You still have time to spend with friends, and you have less stress, and you can still see many (maybe even more) of the places you want without breaking the bank.
I can tell we are probably going to agree to disagree here, but yes, doing all of those things sucks for me.
Making my own food takes time that I could spend doing something else. I also hate cooking, so it sucks even more. I did find cheap frozen food that's good, easy to track and fits my diet, so there's that.
I fly every week for work. Sitting in cheap airline seats for more than three hours is torture in my book. I do realize that some care less about this than others, but getting comfy seats, a decent meal and drinks while being in an enclosed metal tube a mile high really does make a difference for me.
Modest hotels are usually okay, but we need to define "modest" here. If "modest" == hostel or motel, then I'm out. I've done both of those things. I'm good. I don't need the Ritz but a clean, quiet and private room, a comfy bed and security are absolutes for me and motels and hostels vary wildly on having these things.
I would much much rather find ways of maximizing my income. That's actually easier, IMO.
Working "until you die" isn't a bad thing in my book. I really enjoy my work and have for years. I would like financial independence so I can choose what and with whom I'd like to work on and with, but I still see myself working at 60-65 to some capacity in this field, possibly longer.
Example: Being a consultant is really nice if you can find work and enjoy traveling. People pay a lot for your knowledge and they get to benefit from it. I also like the sales aspect of it. I also also like free dinners and drinks!
I agree with you. Our whole economy has been restructured around fat cats finding ways to eek people out of more and more. Without taking a step back, it's hard to realize just how pervasive that's become. I don't attribute this as much to greater discipline by older generations as to cultural and economic differences that made a simpler, more sustainable life the default course.
There are a lot of things about life that are much better now than they were a long time ago. There are new challenges too. To me, this sounds less like an opportunity for a cross-generational blame game and more like an opportunity to collaborate and work to find a good solution.
I personally don't think we're on a stable trajectory as a civilization. Many boomers have virtually no retirement savings (I've heard numbers that say up to half) and over the next decade, continuing to work is not going to be an option anymore for lots of them. They're not going to be able to pay their house payments anymore, let alone anything else. This is what I see as the next major economic crisis.
People don't realize how different our lifestyle today is from any commonly established convention of human habitation. That's been increasingly true over the course of the last 100 years, and we may be far enough detached from the roots now that toppling over is a concern.
People usually live on land that's established as familial territory, aren't required to "pay rent" for much of anything, and use their own land to feed themselves. While this may sound "primitive", it's a lifestyle that can be maintained without the permission of an outside employer, and if you can't make it to your 9-5, you're not imperiled.
Suburban lifestyles are dependent at least on a large existing distribution network and supply chain, and in most cases, the continuing ability to pay rent (or "a mortgage payment") for a very, very long time. Then the children move out and reboot that cycle instead of using the advantages that their progenitors had secured (somewhere to live without paying rent). More traditional family living arrangements are likely going to be needed moving forward.
I'm neither an anthropologist nor a historian so my weak grasp on the details is probably going to get me in trouble if I get much deeper into this argument.
I'll just say that personally, I feel that such sentiment is primarily a construction by the same people who are trying to sell us the need for every adult couple to get a new mortgage, to have six figures on loan for education, to pay $75k+ for new cars every 6 years, and so on. I believe they see the citizenry as an asset that should be exploited to bear interest throughout its working life, and longer if possible. This effectively makes the costs of all durable goods 2x-3x more expensive than the already-high sticker price.
Obviously I don't deny that indeed there have been fiefdoms, slaveholders, and other undesirable living conditions, and I'm not advocating for that type of thing. However, I don't think the sentiment that it was nearly-universal is anywhere near correct, nor do I think that a lot of people in a more traditional culture would view their situation with the same suspicion or contempt that the modern Westerner would.
How do you get from «the vast majority of humans ever living in agricultural societies throughout history were serfs» to “a construction by the same people who are trying to sell us [...]”
I promise I’m not trying to sell you anything. I hardly ever drive a car and only own a used one because my wife likes road trips (I’d be happy to get rid of it), have mostly avoided student loans, live relatively frugally (with the notable exception of buying too many used books), and think it sounds just fine if you do the same. If you want to argue for Marxist critiques of late capitalism or for Buddhist asceticism or whatever, I’m happy to concede the point.
In general, I’d say the people who are trying to sell you something don’t give a damn about economic or social history, and aren’t going to bother “constructing” some vast conspiracy to trick you about the past.
My direct experience is mostly with researching my own ancestors, who were landless peasant farmers living in Ireland, and with decades of close experience with indigenous rural peasants in Mexico (such as my godparents), whose families were mostly quasi-slave migrant agricultural laborers for the past few hundred years, under the oppressive control of the Spanish.
Admittedly, both of those cases were people living at the fringes of empire under an imperialist/capitalist global order. But my research of other times and places suggests that conditions were much the same in most times and most places (e.g. throughout pre-industrial Europe, China, India, and the Middle East). If you want a nice introduction, try Graeber’s book Debt: The First 5000 Years.
Whether rural peasants would view their situations with “suspicion or contempt” is something you can directly ask of the remaining rural peasants in the world. I don’t know about suspicion per se, but for the most part they would prefer to have running water, electricity, televisions, cellphones, modern medical care, non-leaking roofs, a stove that didn’t fill their rooms with outrageous quantities of wood smoke, education for their children, a stable source of income, etc., even at the expense of leaving their families to work in horrendous factories and live in urban slums.
Obviously it’s harder to ask people from a few centuries ago, but I’ll note that my own ancestors took the first available opportunity to flee their ancestral homelands and travel across an ocean away from all of their support networks at great risk and expense, for the mere promise of a better deal.
The boomers inherited the only advanced country in the world that hadn't had its industrial capacity reduced to rubble over the course of two world wars. The US was the only manufacturing supplier left, so naturally every working age adult had a wealth of employment opportunities. Another way to look at the plight of the millennials (full disclosure, I'm a millennial) is "hurray, society hasn't faced a major setback in the form of a catastrophic global war in 80 years!"
The situation is not just unique to the US though: Many countries which had their industrial capacity reduced to rubble are still in the exact same boat: People that started working in the 50s 60s and 70s did a lot better comparatively than those that started after 2000. The 50s were far less happy in Europe than in the US, but there was just so much progress to be made that hit everyone. A big part of it was also population growth.
There's plenty of progress to be made in this decade, but a much smaller percentage of the population is part of this boom: Even for those of us that saw the dot com boom, tech is a picnic.
I look at the outcomes of people that went into science, for instance, and I see them against a wall of tenured professors that will not retire, and an industry that has less demand than there's supply. Those that just picked the wrong major in college are struggling, and those that didn't even go to college, even more so. The only ones ahead of their parents went to tech or got a career by using their connections as a stepping ladder: It's easy to do well in law when daddy makes you partner, stays a few more years and then retires.
As a society, we have to do our best to avoid becoming Brazil, and find ways to improve total outcomes. Having a small group of people that make a whole lot of money, and who give their advantage to the next generation, while a lot of people have worse outcomes than their parents is not exactly a recipe for a happy, peaceful society.
I like how you've identified what the key difference is.
Demand-limited. Not supply limited like we have been for the past 60 years.
I think it applies to more than just academic jobs though. Oil. Cars. Fridges. Laptops. Computers. Dolls. For all of it demand limits seem to be the problem.
This is a fantastic point I've never heard raised on discussions of this topic. However, I think this would address the total wealth/income of the nation, but wealth disparity wouldn't be caused by this, would it?
I'm surprised at how much flack this article is getting here on HN. Is it because we're all making those sweet 1% salaries in tech?
All my non-tech/finance friends are paying obscenely high rent, crippled with student debt, can't afford houses, can't afford cars, and three times as educated as their parents, but paid less than their parents were. In the case of unpaid internships (unavoidable for lots of industries, especially in the arts and media), many aren't being paid at all.
I think there are some possible cultural reasons (our generation being, on a whole I think, a bit less materialistic and not as motivated to work hard, boring, financially-rewarding jobs [like accounting] and more likely to want those sexy art, media, and non-profit jobs.) But overall I think the Boomers have dealt a real bum hand to their children.
> Is it because we're all making those sweet 1% salaries in tech?
Probably. We all know wealth inequality has risen quite a bit as well, so that average of 20% less is not distributed evenly. So to those in places like the valley, where you have a statistically huge chance of making more than your parents did it probably seems wrong. If you have any contact with the rest of the world it is pretty obvious.
And culturally, I think that's the impact of all that education. Their parents and grandparents lived in the culture that invented the "mid-life crisis" as a description of when you realized that your life choices were the result of being lied to about what makes for a good life. I wouldn't be surprised if the lessons of this finally sunk in. Helped along a whole lot by the lack of similar options due to boomer politics.
> Is it because we're all making those sweet 1% salaries in tech?
Probably. People need to realise it's not the normal state of affairs, nor will it last forever.
Where I live, everyone was making 6 figure salaries out of school working for oil companies. Now unemployment is over 10%, and every single person my age who worked for an oil company was laid off, most are back to being bartenders and servers with no future in sight. Many are in tons of debt, a few on the verge of declaring bankruptcy now that they have a car/house/whatever they can't afford anymore.
When you look at economies in the western world as a whole (take out a few boom towns), it's pretty dreary for our generation (I'm on the upper end of what's considered a 'millennial'). Globalism and automation have decimated entire industries, where jobs still exist wages are being driven downward, inequality is increasing, leaving the 'working class' to struggle.
We'll survive, but the future won't look like the past, we'll have a lot less than our parents did (comparatively speaking). No single salary supporting an entire family with 2 vehicles and a single-family home. More like dual income, 0.5 vehicles and a tiny condo.
It's not the apocalypse, but people need to start listening to economists, open their eyes, and boomers need to take responsibility for the shit-show they've created.
Also, as an aside, every single left-wing party in the world right now needs to take a hard look at their policies. It's no longer good enough to be barely right of centre, and support a token progressive cause. Right-wingers want to fix the job situation by destroying globalism, putting up tariffs, and strong-arming companies into bringing jobs back. And you know what, it'll work. It's sound policy economically, in a game theory "fuck you, I've got mine" sort of way, though far from progressive and won't build a better world. If left-wingers ever want to realise their vision, it won't be by crying over straw-men (Russians, Nazi frogs, etc...), they need to become truly progressive economically. This means guaranteed income, an end to our lottery society. But right now, the left doesn't have answers (well, they do, but not the political willpower). The right does, and all across the western world nationalist governments are going to pop up. The writing's on the wall.
Given the energy policies our President is going to be taking, I'm willing to bet your friends in oil will be employed within two years. We'll see, but there's quite a bit of excitement with my chemical engineering friends.
I'm not so optimistic. I live in Alberta, Canada, and we have a few things going against us. For one, not much conventional oil. The cost of extracting oil from bitumen is still very high. Second, most of the lost jobs have been white collar jobs in Calgary (2016 was far worse than 2015, and 2017 is looking dismal). Oil companies have packed up and left town altogether. They're not coming back, because why would they? They're all massive multinationals, wound down operations, and can administer whatever activities they engage in from their offices abroad. So in the case of our city, a slight oil 'comeback' won't help us. Trump's policies won't help us. Even though oil prices have stabilised and drilling is resuming in many places, companies are still laying people off here and commercial vacancy is still increasing.
Ahhh, my bad, I didn't dig enough to see that you were Canadian. If Trump's policies "work" with respect to employment, you may certainly see similar dominos fall. TBD of course.
No worries. As far as Trump's policies go, I think they'll work well enough domestically. Not too long ago, tariffs and deregulation were fairly orthodox economic policies.
And his pro-pipeline stance will be good for Canada, though for Alberta macro issues affect us more than any policy issues.
It's because of survival bias. The people who are successful believe it's because of their hard work and don't attribute some parts of it to luck. So if someone complains because of missing luck they haul out know-it-all advice on how hard work must always lead to success.
A boomer I know bought a house right out of college. He graduated with a civil engineering degree. The house cost twice what his salary was as a brand new CE. The house is recognizable today as a standard split foyer.
College for me (in the 80s) was still fairly inexpensive compared to now, but when I graduated with an EE degree, houses started at 4x or more than what I made.
I see millenials taking higher risks with their housing. Instead of living in the burbs, they're in the city where they get the crime and no decent schools discount. I often see them head for the burbs after getting mugged or when they have kids that need to go to school. But by that time, they're more established and can afford it. Or, they live way out in the boonies and commute.
And now, even the good jobs are being offshored via H1B, paid for by our tax dollars.
> College for me (in the 80s) was still fairly inexpensive compared to now, but when I graduated with an EE degree, houses started at 4x or more than what I made.
In silicon valley housed started at around 10x what I made starting out of college.
It cost $1,000,000,000 to own a computer for baby boomers. I have (depending on how you count) between 3 (PCs - 2 mac and a Windows), and 11 (3 PCs, 2 phones, 2 console, an appleTV, 2 iPads and a Kindle).
That was impossible for my parents, heck for 18 year old me.
People think life is harder now because the equations of life are:
* Happiness = Reality - Expectation.
* Success = MAXIMUM_POSSIBLE_WE_ARE_EXPOSED_TO - what I achieve.
Most people expect a lot these days, and get slightly less and as a result are miserable.
On top of that, MAXIMUM_POSSIBLE_WE_ARE_EXPOSED_TO has increased, as we have more means of communication.
In mathematical terms, the gap between the each of these values of a good life:
1. The absolute highest possible value
2. The MEAN existence.
3. The MEDIAN existence
is increasing. In 1970, there were lots of limits. Today, you can be a YouTube star at home. As some people have it really good, this bumps the maximum and mean values, whereas the median hasn't moved as much since 1970l even though it has increased.
As examples, there are people like Casey Neistat and various Vloggers that live seemingly great lives. There are pro skaters, pro-surfers, musicians, actors, and then the tech billionaires. There are digital nomads, off-the-griders and other niche communties, and I'm sitting here reading Hacker news.
But that is BECAUSE we have just so many more options today. We also live in a world where the possibilities are vast - from travel (I have been to every continent except Antarctica), to work (so many more jobs in niche areas), to lifestyle, range of hobbies, foods available (baby boomers thought Pizza and pasta where exotic), even better COFFEE.
As there is so much possible, and the hours in week has remained static, we all fall short of the MAXIMUM_POSSIBLE_WE_ARE_EXPOSED_TO by a very long margin. No one is eating enough new or interesting foods, has enough cool hobbies they get paid for, plays enough games, has enough sex or spare time or earns Zuckerberg money - and by no one I mean no one person can ever achieve all of those things at once, so when we compare someone else's 100% dedication to our 0.1%, we feel inadequate.
But man, what a world! I am in Australia, writing a response to a person who commented on a system hosted in the USA that was impossible in 1970, using a pocket computer I use to communicate with literally the WORLD, about an article published in USA Today today (well, in some ways technically yesterday as I am a day in front of the west coast of the USA) that would never have reached my country in 1970. What is that worth? Certainly not nothing, even if many people deluded believe they would rather the 3 bedroom house in 1970 without a computer, air conditioning or the internet, not to mention the raft of socially limiting conditions.
I'm not real sure what you mean by social security raiding. Of course the government has borrowed and spent much of the Social Security trust fund, but this has little bearing on the future of Social Security, as the borrowing has been fully accounted for. Some future government could decide not to pay the money back, but they would be responsible for that, not the government that borrowed the money.
If I take out a loan from a bank, I am the one who benefits from the loan, and I am the one that pays it back. But if you borrow from social security, the benficiary and the payee are not the same person, or even the same generation of people. One generation benefits, the next is on the hook to pay.
And that is exactly what happened. Boomers borrowed from social security because they weren't willing to raise taxes on themselves. They promised to pay it back using Millenials' taxes. They got the benefits, we got the debt.
Parents want nothing more than a bright and stable future for their posterity. They vote in accordance with policy that they believe will achieve those ends.
Boomers in the US have largely adopted ideologies that promise prosperity for all but, by shear coincidence, /also/ benefit them directly.
Trouble is, the prosperity stuff is all theoretical (cutting social programs to lower taxes = eventually a better economy, trust me), but all the benefits to the boomers were concrete (shifting tax breaks and program funding towards things that help older people and away from those that help younger people).
Shockingly, after 40 years of these policies, the prosperity for everyone never showed up, but the boomers somehow managed to enrich themselves above all others, despite not (by objective measures) working harder or being more skilled than the generations that came after.
I'm not disagreeing with you, I'm sure a better future was one of the things that they genuinely wanted. I'm saying that boomers (in aggregate) are self-delusional about their greed. Judge people by their actions, not their intentions.
In a strictly rational world, yes. But many people vote without thinking about what improves things for the future, but what makes things better for them now. Or they vote on emotional or moral grounds without considering the actual economic and societal costs.
Parents have dedicated their lives to providing a good future for their children. They absolutely are thinking about the impact this will have on the younger generations, because tarnishing those generations, at least those expected within 100 years of the voter's death, tarnishes themselves and everything they've worked for -- namely, providing a good future for their posterity.
Parent-and-child identity are not separated. The success of the child is the success of the parent, within basic parameters.
It's very naive to assume that an overriding self-interest prevents a parent from tending to their child's needs.
You may disagree with your elders on a subject, which is fine, but it's unfair to characterize them as selfish or unthinking just because you disagree with their perspective on what will benefit their children. (Children frequently do disagree with their parents, and are usually proven wrong.)
> It's very naive to assume that an overriding self-interest prevents a parent from tending to their child's needs.
Where is this sentiment in my post? I'm saying, people aren't rational. They don't think in a deliberate, utopian fashion like your first paragraph suggests in all their thinking. We, as a species, tend to be shortsighted. And parents aren't that much better just by being parents. They still vote based on emotional and moral perspectives that end up hurting their children and future generations, though that's not their intent. Consider NC and their "bathroom bill" crap that has hurt the state's economy. Or preventing municipal broadband. Or cutting teacher pay and benefits and forcing teachers to quit or leave the state to make a decent living. Maybe it seemed like a good idea at the time, but they've fucked over every K-12 student and many others.
Most of them went into the workforce when the Great recession hit.
The ability to write off a student loan as a bankruptcy was removed in 2005. While part of this law has been thrown out, many people are still stuck as indentured servants to the loan sharks.
Housing is insane... around here in the bay area, but from the older people I've chatted with, it was always a tough market. Now, if you moved to my hometown, you could get a beautiful home for $200k.
Income in a vacuum isn't all that useful a metric. What matters more is what you can do with it, leading to what matters most: your actual quality of life.
Without feeling compelled to do a deep analysis, taking a 20% hit in exchange for, say, being able to afford broadband and a smartphone/notebook to use it is a deal I'd make all day.
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[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 134 ms ] threadThese are the values boomers taught that money doesn't buy happiness. So this is not really shocking to see that they are not in the same place monetarily.
I would view this is at least some measure of success. The boomers were able to teach a value system they believed was better than their life.
This is a quite complex subject, but the simple view is priorities. There is a priority of short term thinking with millennials focused around instant gratification. That's not to say that it's wrong but it is a priority which has and effect on how life plays out. An easy example of this is how everything is described as a "hack" and not a "grind".
Boomers, whether they knew it or not, were more long term focused. Part of it was a function of the world of the time. You had to wait for the Sears catalogue to come in the mail. You don't have a credit card so you make layaway payments etc... You just had to focus farther out. They scarified a lot of short term and gained a long term benefit.
Sadly most, including this article, equate education with motivation. It's not the same thing. Going to college because you don't know what to do next and mom says go doesn't mean that the education will give you a leg up in life.
Less money - more spending - good, or as GP put it "Millennials prioritize entertainment and free time more than boomers as well"
This of course assumes the problem is the choices boomers are making. Just so we're clear: people choose to work in Amazon fulfillment centers. Hell, boomers PAY amazon for transportation to work here : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYUJjpIxkCU (seriously, when will congress bring down the hammer on companies charging employees ? It is always, always and again after that used to exploit the lowest workers). If you prefer to see this in government stats : https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS12600000 and -worse- https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNU02026625 and https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNU02026628
From most graphs I get the impression this is the situation. Since Obama came to office there has been the GFC. I think it would be fair to say that US employment has recovered about half the losses it endured during the GFC, taking all statistics together. That does not, to me, sound like a good result at all, and at least for me, is a big part of the explanation that Trump got elected. For most people employment is worse than when Obama came to power (of course he should probably not be blamed for the GFC, but still, he's got the top job. He bears some responsibility)
Similar argument: More debt - more spending - good
Those sorts of arguments. Truth is the economics for the vast majority of the world's population have steadily worsened since about 2000-2001 (worldwide average). Silicon Valley and in fact most huge cities are an exception.
We emphasize entertainment and free time because it's all we have left in otherwise dreary economic circumstances.
This will only mean something when we hit prime working age for millennials. Let's see the numbers then.
Unto perpetuity ;)
I thought my (Millennials) generation was born in 1992 or afterwards. So I was about to challenge your 'mid thirties' assertion. Wikipedia also has a wide range of start and stop birth years, ranging from 1976 to 1996 as the start birth year. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennials#Date_and_age_range...
Then I saw this. http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/04/25/millennials-...
It claims that Millenials were born in between 1981 and 1997.
Who is right?
I'm someone in that gap and identify much more closely with millennials than with the Gen X slackers, though a lot of my childhood friends also in that gap identify more with Gen X.
Perhaps it's a combination of my job, that i feel i grew up with (along with?) the internet because my parents were pretty fast in getting connected, and that i have older siblings who are very much Gen X as in leaving college during very difficult job times in the early 90s, and I never shared their experiences.
Easy to remember that way, as well ;-)
We both have younger siblings who were born in '84 (graduated in high school 2002). They're the oldest of what I'd call "true millenials" - I think one of the big distinguishing things is that those who graduated after 2000 had Facebook in college, whereas I didn't. Sure, there was ICQ, IRC, various web forums, Myspace and Friendster and all that stuff, but it wasn't quite the same; those didn't have nearly the reach of Facebook, and most of the people I interacted with pre-facebook I didn't know IRL. I used Facebook to keep in touch with College friends after we all graduated and did the whole post-college-diaspora thing, but my brother and his friends used Facebook constantly as a key part of their social life.
Additionally, cell phones were much more prevalent for the "true millenials" - my brother and I both got cell phones in '03, and for him it was a core part of his college experience.
Similar to how "the cloud" is used so often it is just a meaningless buzzword. You've probably heard of the cloud-to-butt extension[0]. This is its less-famous sibling.
[0]: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/cloud-to-butt-plus...
I am from Brazil, and many boomers told me when I was young how awesome I was to be young, because I was living in a golden age where I didn't had to walk uphill both ways to school, could have computer, and whatnot.
But it is me that envy them now, I am 29, have zero income, lots of debt, and own no assets (not even a bicycle).
The same applies to almost all my friends and aquaintances, and even so, the "almost" is because one of them is an absolute exception (he was already rich, and made a hit game, his game is probably on top20 most sold on Steam right now...), and some of the humble and smart ones decided to ignore the "adults" advice, don't go to college and deliberately choose professions seen in bad light in the social sense (construction, plumbing, car mechanic, CNC operator, security guard...)
The few friends I have that have families, did it by accident (ie: accidental pregnancy), and all of them are unemployed, and their spouses (when they actually have one, some are single parents) are unemployed too, the "least worse" couple are the ones that have moderately rich parents, and they have both sides of the family giving their child the stuff the child needs.
And the thing is, although this is mostly about my country (Brazil), I have lots of friends outside Brazil too, that are also in this situation, one guy I know is an absolute crazy coding genius (And his game is rumored to have inspired No Man's Sky) and he is 40, and also childless, and own only a very old (20+ years I think) car, I have some Canadian friends also with problems like that, I know people that worked in AAA game studios around the planet and still failed to make enough money to pay student debts and start a family.
To be honest, the situation just feel hopeless, sometimes I get myself with the intruding unwanted thought of wishing someone would start WWIII just to see if at least life would be less boring. And from what I am seeing in the "mood" in social media and elections worldwide, I am not alone in this...
Yes, another 3% of humanity dying in a global war would be very interesting.
That is a damn good description of why accelerationists are gaining popularity. I think a lot of the alt-right obsession comes from this as well.
Ironically the alt-right seems to be anti-war (at least when it comes to war with other superpowers, namely Russia), but there is definitely nihilistic tendencies within the movement. Sort of a "globalism sucks, so let's kill it with fire" thing...
I have a hard time feeling sorry for people who write such essays. You are clearly a talented writer. Are you unable to start some kind of a business and hustle for 14 hours a day?? Why do you have time to be here and not there?
Do you honestly think this person hasn't tried. And do you honestly believe that just because he spends his evenings on HN he's not a stand up person?
I will bluntly state that if you have the kind of writing talent that OP displayed, and you cannot afford a bicycle, you are simply not applying yourself.
That level of skill alone could easily net you $1500/month+ on various writing services (at an extremely conservative 2000 words/day * $0.03/word * 20 days/month). Nobody said it'd be fun or easy, but hey, you'd at least have a bicycle after you got paid.
My father, born in 1930, had to perform manual labor on farms because that was how stuff got produced. There was no barrier to entry. He then worked until retirement on mechanical phone switches, which are now beyond obsolete.
One thing that has stuck out at me has been the ways in which people have money drained from them. I think there is a huge student loan problem where young people were "sold" a crappy education. But setting that aside for the moment there is a huge difference in lifestyle that I see in people; going out to eat more, paying for basic entertainment, communication charges, credit, and transportation.
Something that seems to be missed on people is that debt is very corrosive to your future wealth. People who carry a balance on a credit card, month after month, may feel like its "okay" because they always have enough to at least pay the minimum but it isn't. When they don't take the time to each bag lunches, breakfast and dinner at home they are sending more of their money out into the world and out of their future. When the world tells them every car has to have backup cameras it means they are going to have bigger car payments. Coffee habits, in app purchases, cable TV instead of free over the air TV.
Some people budget badly, some don't. But before you slam an entire "generation" I think it makes sense to look a bit deeper at the forces at play.
The trouble is, my generation faces lower real wages and higher housing costs, and those effects are so large that Starbucks habits are basically noise in comparison.
That narrative doesn't pat you on the back for your superior discipline, so you're not impresssed with it, and you pivot to anecdata about the moral weakness of kids these days.
Right, because spending $1500-2000/year on Starbucks and another $2000-$4000+/year on McDonald's and other takeout for 2-3 meals a day is "noise". Consumerism is a very real thing today. There are lower middle class people who blow $30-50 a day on Starbucks, energy drinks, going out for lunch, and ordering pizza for dinner. Throw in alcohol, cigarettes, and/or weed.
You can talk about wages and the price of a home all you want. Nobody 20-40 years ago threw 30-60%+ of their net pay away on daily impulse/routine purchases. Now it's extremely common.
For the pool of people who work 40+ hours a week, while not spending money on any of the stupid things listed above, who still find it hard to make ends meet - those are the people I sympathize with. However, even many people who claim to be wise with their spending like to think that their $7/day Starbucks is just a "small indulgence". $7/day * 5 work days a week * 50 weeks a year = $1750/year. Make it $9-10 dollars a day, for $2500/year, to add a muffin to your morning coffee.
I really get tired of hearing people complain about low wages and being broke, but aren't willing on doing anything about it. Ranting on Facebook from their $700 - $800 Iphone while drinking a $5 coffee.
I've worked really hard for everything I have. Late nights on my own, studying to better myself. Missing opportunities to hang out with friends, concerts, etc. But, at the end of the day, I chose to focus on my skills, knowledge, and career. So, when I see these same people complaining, I feel like they are degrading the time I spent and luxuries I gave up to get to where I am.
We live in a really odd time. The concept of money is abstracted away in virtual credit cards - at amounts our parents never had access to. We buy computers and cell phones - things our parents never had. The very idea of spending that kind of money for what you get in return would have been entirely inconceivable for their generation. Today, these things are considered as necessary essentials rather than luxuries.
Good on you for your hard work. I can attest to the fact that it is extremely difficult to ignore conventional modern consumerism. It took me a suicidal "early life crisis" 4 years ago - at the age of 27 - to "get it". I went from being severely in debt (no student loans, just a voluntarily repossessed car and maxed out credit cards), to responsibly paying off every penny. For the first time in my life, I actually have a savings account with some money put away. My spending habits are still not ideal, but I'm doing far better now than I ever did before I hit bottom.
The boomer generation, in full control of politics my entire adult life and for the foreseeable future, has made real estate in my city into a ponzi scheme, and I don't ever expect to live in a house here.
What I can expect is to shoulder the tax burden of a large population of people who have not saved nearly enough for retirement, are leveraged against their massively overpriced properties, and are projected to live for a very, very long time. And the data shows that quite clearly.
> Between 1982 and 2010, mortgage debt grew from $99 billion to $994 billion (in current dollars), while consumer debt increased from $48 billion to $460 billion. [1]
> The average market value of an owned dwelling quadrupled, from $71,800 to $303,500 (current dollars) between 1982 and 2008. [1]
> The indebtedness of Canadian households increased from $147 billion in 1982 to $1,454 billion by 2010—in current dollars. [1]
> More than 1.5 million families who have a main provider between 45 and 64 had no private pension savings in 1999, the agency reported Friday. These households will have to rely almost solely on public retirement plans Old Age Security and the Canada or Quebec Pension Plans. [2]
[1] http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/75-001-x/2011002/article/11429-... [2] http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/many-not-saving-enough-for-ret...
Them saving more wouldn't help much. Saving has a counter-party, someone who gets real goods and services now in exchange for repaying the debt later. Who's the counter-party for the retirees' savings? Obviously it can't be the retirees, since they're busy, you know, being retired.
What'd increased saving would cash out to is shoveling money into repaying education loans held by pension funds that pay the boomers, rather than paying taxes that fund retirement programs. It doesn't mean you don't support retiring boomers, it just means that you get better compensation today for doing so.
In a "hot" city it's trivial to get very modest places that have monthly tax bills more than rent is on a similar sized place in the mid-tier NFL city I grew up in. That's a lot of cashflow to be burning - even if the investment is appreciating faster than the burn. It eventually forces you to sell and move, when your goal was not an investment but a place to live and make a home.
I bought a house that I wanted to live in, that I could afford the taxes on, and now I can't afford the taxes through no fault of my own. There is no solace to be taken in the fact that if I sold it, I might get 30% more than I paid. I don't want the money. If I wanted the money, I wouldn't have bought the house to live in, in the first place. I want what I bought two years ago; the house I could afford to live in. 30% increase in alleged value is of no use to me, and it's costing me money.
Since I'm an engineer and have been since the 80's and a hiring manager for much of the last 15 years I can tell you that the starting wage for an electrical engineer or a computer programmer with a four year degree is around $85,000 (that was IBM's "standard offer" regardless of geography for a New College Grad with a 4 year degree). My starting wage in 1984 was $25,500 (which was Intel's standard offer for New College Grads with a 4 year degree). According to (https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl) my salary in 1984 would be $60,000 today. That suggests to me that for my job and education there has been a 42% increase in salary.
I certainly agree that where I live (the Bay Area) the price of housing has outpaced that increase in salary, especially in home ownership. That appears to be stabilizing a bit as additional housing comes on line but it remains to be seen if that truly reflects what it costs. I also got married to an engineer and so we were both bringing home "engineering" salaries and that gave us the ability to get into a house in 1988 with a 12% adjustable mortgage rate.
So what does this anecdote tell us? Not a whole lot. Engineers make more today out of college than they did in the 80's. Not really a huge surprise.
I think Internet access is essential today, at its cheapest its probably $30/month, more if you combine it with a phone. That is a cost I didn't have to pay. But its an example of things that people today do have to pay.
Informational value? Not high.
The truth is that not all people born between 1985 and 1995 make 20% less than their parents in 2016 than people who were born from 1955 to 1965 made in 1986. Some make more, some make less, some make about the same. How many? That would be an interesting thing to know but this article doesn't tell us how to understand that. It picks out some anecdotes, sprinkles in some common boogeymen (student loan debt) and implies we're all headed for the crapper.
So it didn't impress me very much.
PS. Don't dismiss the coffee habit out of hand. $500 a year compounded at 4% a year over 40 years (21 -> 61) is a bit more than $50,000 you don't get to spend in retirement.
http://younginvincibles.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/FHYA-...
(admittedly, by way of
http://younginvincibles.org/
http://younginvincibles.org/financial-security-report/
http://younginvincibles.org/financial-health/
)
They don't particularly show their work there, but it is believable that they are generating the various analyses from the Survey of Consumer Finances done by the Fed (aka decent statistics).
The cost of education and health care is what is crushing today's generation, not backup cameras, Starbucks, and iPhones.
No, that Starbucks habit isn't noise. I consumed Starbucks coffee daily after Christmas a few years back (got a lot of gift cards for them for some reason). It was $2/day for a cup of coffee. $10/week. Continued through the year, $500 (holidays and such mean I won't commute, vacations I may still indulge). That's 2 car payments if you buy a modest car. That's a significant chunk of your rent, possibly all of it, if you're not in NYC or SF or somewhere equally absurdly expensive.
It's like a code smell. If you're consuming pricy drinks on a frequent basis, what else are you doing that you could do for a fraction of the price yourself? Look at every other $1/day habit you have. Sodas? Modest 1/day habit (along with being unhealthy) if you don't buy them at the grocery store is around $2/day (bottle or fountain). That's another $500/year. Netflix + Hulu + Spotify + HBO Now + Amazon Prime + Cable? Do you really need all of them? I didn't, kept Netflix + Amazon Prime and saved $1200/year, more than a rent payment.
There, between coffee, soda, and media, I've saved > $2000. If your income is low, as this article discusses, this is a significant percentage of your income. 4% if your income is only $50k. Higher if you consider your net-income on that and not your gross-income. You still want coffee? I'm in an espresso club at work, 8 people, espresso twice a day, costs me $20/year for my contribution. Drop the sodas, they aren't healthy for you anyways, drink one once a week or so as a treat.
Examine your spending, really look at it. You'll find that you likely have a lot of places where you "leak" money, because it's just a coffee, or just a soda, or just a cocktail. Then it doesn't become an occasional spending thing, like once a week or month. But more frequent, daily or several times a week. Your money is gone and you don't know where it went.
But more generally. "Do you really need this?" is the right question to ask about the expense, effort, and unpleasantness you tolerate from the overhead in life, such as education, work, housing, transportation, sustenance, etc. And yes, you probably need at least the minimum viable product in each category, and the savings to continue purchasing it during unemployment and retirement.
For the rest, I'm much more interested in, "is this worth it?" Good food, books, TV, movies, concerts, theater, and yes, Sunday afternoons at the coffee shop are what all that overhead is for, particularly when shared with people whose company I enjoy.
If I need to find an additional $2k, I will pull it from overheard (be slightly less picky about my next apartment, or put up with a less pleasant commute). Not cut all the enjoyment from my life.
I use (and love) You Need a Budget. My entertainment category is about 5% of my take-home, with savings of about 25%, and I'm satisfied with this. (Of course, I am extremely fortunate to be early in life with a great education, high income, and good health).
Yeah, anecdotes usually don't stand up well to statistics.
Do you mean they will pursue the camera's aspirationally? It's going to be a mandate soon:
http://www.autonews.com/article/20140331/OEM11/140339979/u.s...
I think finding balance is key.
Side note: I'm 29 and have credit card and student loan debt. I'm not proud of it and paying it back is inconvenient, but I'm able to afford the burden at the moment and am enjoying a higher quality of life because of it. I also contribute to my 401k and chose funds with low management overhead, so my future self isn't being completely left out to dry. I literally wouldn't have been on the career track I'm on now had I not taken student loans.
Isn't this just called "work" or "discipline"? You put up with the drudgery of effort because you want to be able to enjoy the benefits of your labor later. Everything works that way. Not going to get around it.
You're right, though: there is absolutely a balance to be struck. I think the parent's point is that the balance is not being struck well by many. My POV is that that's true, and that cultural and economic forces that encourage this imbalance make it difficult for your average Millennial to avoid.
Define maximize and minimize. Is a life lived "to the fullest" worth it, when you find yourself frequently fighting off panic attacks as you realize you have to work until you die? Is a life spent maxing out a couple retirement accounts (IRA, 401k for most of us in the US), along with cooking your own food, and traveling to more modest hotels and always in the cheap airline seats really minimized? You still have time to spend with friends, and you have less stress, and you can still see many (maybe even more) of the places you want without breaking the bank.
Making my own food takes time that I could spend doing something else. I also hate cooking, so it sucks even more. I did find cheap frozen food that's good, easy to track and fits my diet, so there's that.
I fly every week for work. Sitting in cheap airline seats for more than three hours is torture in my book. I do realize that some care less about this than others, but getting comfy seats, a decent meal and drinks while being in an enclosed metal tube a mile high really does make a difference for me.
Modest hotels are usually okay, but we need to define "modest" here. If "modest" == hostel or motel, then I'm out. I've done both of those things. I'm good. I don't need the Ritz but a clean, quiet and private room, a comfy bed and security are absolutes for me and motels and hostels vary wildly on having these things.
I would much much rather find ways of maximizing my income. That's actually easier, IMO.
Working "until you die" isn't a bad thing in my book. I really enjoy my work and have for years. I would like financial independence so I can choose what and with whom I'd like to work on and with, but I still see myself working at 60-65 to some capacity in this field, possibly longer.
Example: Being a consultant is really nice if you can find work and enjoy traveling. People pay a lot for your knowledge and they get to benefit from it. I also like the sales aspect of it. I also also like free dinners and drinks!
There are a lot of things about life that are much better now than they were a long time ago. There are new challenges too. To me, this sounds less like an opportunity for a cross-generational blame game and more like an opportunity to collaborate and work to find a good solution.
I personally don't think we're on a stable trajectory as a civilization. Many boomers have virtually no retirement savings (I've heard numbers that say up to half) and over the next decade, continuing to work is not going to be an option anymore for lots of them. They're not going to be able to pay their house payments anymore, let alone anything else. This is what I see as the next major economic crisis.
People don't realize how different our lifestyle today is from any commonly established convention of human habitation. That's been increasingly true over the course of the last 100 years, and we may be far enough detached from the roots now that toppling over is a concern.
People usually live on land that's established as familial territory, aren't required to "pay rent" for much of anything, and use their own land to feed themselves. While this may sound "primitive", it's a lifestyle that can be maintained without the permission of an outside employer, and if you can't make it to your 9-5, you're not imperiled.
Suburban lifestyles are dependent at least on a large existing distribution network and supply chain, and in most cases, the continuing ability to pay rent (or "a mortgage payment") for a very, very long time. Then the children move out and reboot that cycle instead of using the advantages that their progenitors had secured (somewhere to live without paying rent). More traditional family living arrangements are likely going to be needed moving forward.
The utopian dream of the self-sufficient yeoman farmer has mostly been a rare exceptional case.
I'll just say that personally, I feel that such sentiment is primarily a construction by the same people who are trying to sell us the need for every adult couple to get a new mortgage, to have six figures on loan for education, to pay $75k+ for new cars every 6 years, and so on. I believe they see the citizenry as an asset that should be exploited to bear interest throughout its working life, and longer if possible. This effectively makes the costs of all durable goods 2x-3x more expensive than the already-high sticker price.
Obviously I don't deny that indeed there have been fiefdoms, slaveholders, and other undesirable living conditions, and I'm not advocating for that type of thing. However, I don't think the sentiment that it was nearly-universal is anywhere near correct, nor do I think that a lot of people in a more traditional culture would view their situation with the same suspicion or contempt that the modern Westerner would.
I promise I’m not trying to sell you anything. I hardly ever drive a car and only own a used one because my wife likes road trips (I’d be happy to get rid of it), have mostly avoided student loans, live relatively frugally (with the notable exception of buying too many used books), and think it sounds just fine if you do the same. If you want to argue for Marxist critiques of late capitalism or for Buddhist asceticism or whatever, I’m happy to concede the point.
In general, I’d say the people who are trying to sell you something don’t give a damn about economic or social history, and aren’t going to bother “constructing” some vast conspiracy to trick you about the past.
My direct experience is mostly with researching my own ancestors, who were landless peasant farmers living in Ireland, and with decades of close experience with indigenous rural peasants in Mexico (such as my godparents), whose families were mostly quasi-slave migrant agricultural laborers for the past few hundred years, under the oppressive control of the Spanish.
Admittedly, both of those cases were people living at the fringes of empire under an imperialist/capitalist global order. But my research of other times and places suggests that conditions were much the same in most times and most places (e.g. throughout pre-industrial Europe, China, India, and the Middle East). If you want a nice introduction, try Graeber’s book Debt: The First 5000 Years.
Whether rural peasants would view their situations with “suspicion or contempt” is something you can directly ask of the remaining rural peasants in the world. I don’t know about suspicion per se, but for the most part they would prefer to have running water, electricity, televisions, cellphones, modern medical care, non-leaking roofs, a stove that didn’t fill their rooms with outrageous quantities of wood smoke, education for their children, a stable source of income, etc., even at the expense of leaving their families to work in horrendous factories and live in urban slums.
Obviously it’s harder to ask people from a few centuries ago, but I’ll note that my own ancestors took the first available opportunity to flee their ancestral homelands and travel across an ocean away from all of their support networks at great risk and expense, for the mere promise of a better deal.
There's plenty of progress to be made in this decade, but a much smaller percentage of the population is part of this boom: Even for those of us that saw the dot com boom, tech is a picnic.
I look at the outcomes of people that went into science, for instance, and I see them against a wall of tenured professors that will not retire, and an industry that has less demand than there's supply. Those that just picked the wrong major in college are struggling, and those that didn't even go to college, even more so. The only ones ahead of their parents went to tech or got a career by using their connections as a stepping ladder: It's easy to do well in law when daddy makes you partner, stays a few more years and then retires.
As a society, we have to do our best to avoid becoming Brazil, and find ways to improve total outcomes. Having a small group of people that make a whole lot of money, and who give their advantage to the next generation, while a lot of people have worse outcomes than their parents is not exactly a recipe for a happy, peaceful society.
Demand-limited. Not supply limited like we have been for the past 60 years.
I think it applies to more than just academic jobs though. Oil. Cars. Fridges. Laptops. Computers. Dolls. For all of it demand limits seem to be the problem.
All my non-tech/finance friends are paying obscenely high rent, crippled with student debt, can't afford houses, can't afford cars, and three times as educated as their parents, but paid less than their parents were. In the case of unpaid internships (unavoidable for lots of industries, especially in the arts and media), many aren't being paid at all.
I think there are some possible cultural reasons (our generation being, on a whole I think, a bit less materialistic and not as motivated to work hard, boring, financially-rewarding jobs [like accounting] and more likely to want those sexy art, media, and non-profit jobs.) But overall I think the Boomers have dealt a real bum hand to their children.
Probably. We all know wealth inequality has risen quite a bit as well, so that average of 20% less is not distributed evenly. So to those in places like the valley, where you have a statistically huge chance of making more than your parents did it probably seems wrong. If you have any contact with the rest of the world it is pretty obvious.
And culturally, I think that's the impact of all that education. Their parents and grandparents lived in the culture that invented the "mid-life crisis" as a description of when you realized that your life choices were the result of being lied to about what makes for a good life. I wouldn't be surprised if the lessons of this finally sunk in. Helped along a whole lot by the lack of similar options due to boomer politics.
Probably. People need to realise it's not the normal state of affairs, nor will it last forever.
Where I live, everyone was making 6 figure salaries out of school working for oil companies. Now unemployment is over 10%, and every single person my age who worked for an oil company was laid off, most are back to being bartenders and servers with no future in sight. Many are in tons of debt, a few on the verge of declaring bankruptcy now that they have a car/house/whatever they can't afford anymore.
When you look at economies in the western world as a whole (take out a few boom towns), it's pretty dreary for our generation (I'm on the upper end of what's considered a 'millennial'). Globalism and automation have decimated entire industries, where jobs still exist wages are being driven downward, inequality is increasing, leaving the 'working class' to struggle.
We'll survive, but the future won't look like the past, we'll have a lot less than our parents did (comparatively speaking). No single salary supporting an entire family with 2 vehicles and a single-family home. More like dual income, 0.5 vehicles and a tiny condo.
It's not the apocalypse, but people need to start listening to economists, open their eyes, and boomers need to take responsibility for the shit-show they've created.
Also, as an aside, every single left-wing party in the world right now needs to take a hard look at their policies. It's no longer good enough to be barely right of centre, and support a token progressive cause. Right-wingers want to fix the job situation by destroying globalism, putting up tariffs, and strong-arming companies into bringing jobs back. And you know what, it'll work. It's sound policy economically, in a game theory "fuck you, I've got mine" sort of way, though far from progressive and won't build a better world. If left-wingers ever want to realise their vision, it won't be by crying over straw-men (Russians, Nazi frogs, etc...), they need to become truly progressive economically. This means guaranteed income, an end to our lottery society. But right now, the left doesn't have answers (well, they do, but not the political willpower). The right does, and all across the western world nationalist governments are going to pop up. The writing's on the wall.
And his pro-pipeline stance will be good for Canada, though for Alberta macro issues affect us more than any policy issues.
College for me (in the 80s) was still fairly inexpensive compared to now, but when I graduated with an EE degree, houses started at 4x or more than what I made.
I see millenials taking higher risks with their housing. Instead of living in the burbs, they're in the city where they get the crime and no decent schools discount. I often see them head for the burbs after getting mugged or when they have kids that need to go to school. But by that time, they're more established and can afford it. Or, they live way out in the boonies and commute.
And now, even the good jobs are being offshored via H1B, paid for by our tax dollars.
In silicon valley housed started at around 10x what I made starting out of college.
I'll mention that more millennials should consider leaving to live in non 1st class cities. Just look at atlanta vs sf (https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?cou...). I can tell you that SF wages are not 1.8x ATL's.
It cost $1,000,000,000 to own a computer for baby boomers. I have (depending on how you count) between 3 (PCs - 2 mac and a Windows), and 11 (3 PCs, 2 phones, 2 console, an appleTV, 2 iPads and a Kindle).
That was impossible for my parents, heck for 18 year old me.
People think life is harder now because the equations of life are:
* Happiness = Reality - Expectation. * Success = MAXIMUM_POSSIBLE_WE_ARE_EXPOSED_TO - what I achieve.
Most people expect a lot these days, and get slightly less and as a result are miserable.
On top of that, MAXIMUM_POSSIBLE_WE_ARE_EXPOSED_TO has increased, as we have more means of communication.
In mathematical terms, the gap between the each of these values of a good life: 1. The absolute highest possible value 2. The MEAN existence. 3. The MEDIAN existence
is increasing. In 1970, there were lots of limits. Today, you can be a YouTube star at home. As some people have it really good, this bumps the maximum and mean values, whereas the median hasn't moved as much since 1970l even though it has increased.
As examples, there are people like Casey Neistat and various Vloggers that live seemingly great lives. There are pro skaters, pro-surfers, musicians, actors, and then the tech billionaires. There are digital nomads, off-the-griders and other niche communties, and I'm sitting here reading Hacker news.
But that is BECAUSE we have just so many more options today. We also live in a world where the possibilities are vast - from travel (I have been to every continent except Antarctica), to work (so many more jobs in niche areas), to lifestyle, range of hobbies, foods available (baby boomers thought Pizza and pasta where exotic), even better COFFEE.
As there is so much possible, and the hours in week has remained static, we all fall short of the MAXIMUM_POSSIBLE_WE_ARE_EXPOSED_TO by a very long margin. No one is eating enough new or interesting foods, has enough cool hobbies they get paid for, plays enough games, has enough sex or spare time or earns Zuckerberg money - and by no one I mean no one person can ever achieve all of those things at once, so when we compare someone else's 100% dedication to our 0.1%, we feel inadequate.
But man, what a world! I am in Australia, writing a response to a person who commented on a system hosted in the USA that was impossible in 1970, using a pocket computer I use to communicate with literally the WORLD, about an article published in USA Today today (well, in some ways technically yesterday as I am a day in front of the west coast of the USA) that would never have reached my country in 1970. What is that worth? Certainly not nothing, even if many people deluded believe they would rather the 3 bedroom house in 1970 without a computer, air conditioning or the internet, not to mention the raft of socially limiting conditions.
Rant over!
What seemingly great times we live in indeed.
1) have much higher housing costs, due to housing policies created by boomers
2) have much higher out of pocket education costs, due to education policies created by boomers
3) have much higher out of pocket health care costs, due to health care policies created by boomers
4) have much higher payroll taxes due to social security raiding and general mismanagement by boomers
5) have much higher sales taxes due to erosion of property tax revenues from policies created by boomers
6) have much higher future income taxes due to decades of deficits from policies created by boomers.
And they after they are done FUBAR-ing us, they call us entitled for wanting reform.
The maximum income they apply to has increased since then though:
https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/policybriefs/pb2011-02.html
(using the inflation adjusted numbers, 20-25%)
I'm not real sure what you mean by social security raiding. Of course the government has borrowed and spent much of the Social Security trust fund, but this has little bearing on the future of Social Security, as the borrowing has been fully accounted for. Some future government could decide not to pay the money back, but they would be responsible for that, not the government that borrowed the money.
And that is exactly what happened. Boomers borrowed from social security because they weren't willing to raise taxes on themselves. They promised to pay it back using Millenials' taxes. They got the benefits, we got the debt.
Trouble is, the prosperity stuff is all theoretical (cutting social programs to lower taxes = eventually a better economy, trust me), but all the benefits to the boomers were concrete (shifting tax breaks and program funding towards things that help older people and away from those that help younger people).
Shockingly, after 40 years of these policies, the prosperity for everyone never showed up, but the boomers somehow managed to enrich themselves above all others, despite not (by objective measures) working harder or being more skilled than the generations that came after.
I'm not disagreeing with you, I'm sure a better future was one of the things that they genuinely wanted. I'm saying that boomers (in aggregate) are self-delusional about their greed. Judge people by their actions, not their intentions.
Parent-and-child identity are not separated. The success of the child is the success of the parent, within basic parameters.
It's very naive to assume that an overriding self-interest prevents a parent from tending to their child's needs.
You may disagree with your elders on a subject, which is fine, but it's unfair to characterize them as selfish or unthinking just because you disagree with their perspective on what will benefit their children. (Children frequently do disagree with their parents, and are usually proven wrong.)
Where is this sentiment in my post? I'm saying, people aren't rational. They don't think in a deliberate, utopian fashion like your first paragraph suggests in all their thinking. We, as a species, tend to be shortsighted. And parents aren't that much better just by being parents. They still vote based on emotional and moral perspectives that end up hurting their children and future generations, though that's not their intent. Consider NC and their "bathroom bill" crap that has hurt the state's economy. Or preventing municipal broadband. Or cutting teacher pay and benefits and forcing teachers to quit or leave the state to make a decent living. Maybe it seemed like a good idea at the time, but they've fucked over every K-12 student and many others.
The ability to write off a student loan as a bankruptcy was removed in 2005. While part of this law has been thrown out, many people are still stuck as indentured servants to the loan sharks.
Housing is insane... around here in the bay area, but from the older people I've chatted with, it was always a tough market. Now, if you moved to my hometown, you could get a beautiful home for $200k.
Without feeling compelled to do a deep analysis, taking a 20% hit in exchange for, say, being able to afford broadband and a smartphone/notebook to use it is a deal I'd make all day.