I think this is really the tale of two Millennials and is a phenomenon that actually effects all generations currently. There is a concentration of wealth in this country and the wage increases in the bottom 90% have not kept up with the cost of goods limiting the purchasing power of this group. This issue is exacerbated by the increasing costs of goods and education leading to higher levels of debt for Millennials.
Anecdotal evidence shows that a lot of new grads with technical degrees are getting offers around $200k in the bay area and seattle (these are the other Millennials). By 5 years they're making more than many boomers did over a very successful 30+ year career. Clearly this is only a small subset of Millennials, but it is an example of concentration. I'm not sure whether this discrepancy between "classes" of new grads existed previously, does anyone have insight?
Yes, this is why us 10%ers have a responsibility to the 90%.
At the same time, I'm not sure how you can reasonably say things like 'The cost of goods went up'.
If you want to blame government inflation, sure, but the cost of technology has plummeted in the last 10/20/30 years. Food is the cheapest its ever been, cost to move a mile cheapest, etc...
Its not genuine to speak that prices are going up.
I think it works both ways. My Millennial daughter and her friends looks at their parents lifestyle and say "not interested". Not interested in a big house in the boonies filled with stuff you don't want and don't need. They seem to want experiences rather than stuff. That's having a positive effect on the service economy and a negative effect on the stuff economy.
I'm fascinated because when did owning a home with a family become 'not' an experience? Legitimately confused by this.
I have a house in a rural area (because of where I work) with a wife, kid, cat, and dog. Most of my friends are just aghast that I would choose to 'settle down' because I won't get any experiences at all. I mean, I'm not dead. . .
First, we get articles blaming Millennials for things.
Then, as people start to push back (prior to this article), we have off-hand mentions that every generation blames the younger/older generation.
But is this really equivalent? My (limited) understanding is that the Boomers were themselves quite exceptional - we're in the longest era of global-level peace, the Boomers themselves WERE a "boom" of population, the extended middle class of the 50s was an anomaly, etc. Add to this that Millennials face new issues in ways that other generations haven't: climate change is literally a sea-level change, education is more costly, communication is more global, and of course, for the US and many other countries, the next generation that will support them is much smaller rather than larger. Certainly there are parallels to previous generational conflicts, but I don't see a reason to shrug this off as just normal.
I'm GenX, and the articles when I was hitting the workforce were dismissive and condescending, but in a "aw, they're young and naive" as opposed to "they are failures as human beings" that I read in a lot of the Millennial coverage.
Does anyone know of studies into whether this IS just normal inter-generational gripes?
The whole generations thing was made up by the Boomers in ad agencies trying to sell more products through demographic targeting. Just as many other Boomers were fascinated by astrology/horoscopes and "Ages", they latched on to a lot of weird pseudo-science that stuck and says a lot more about them anything else.
They venerated their parents and placed them on a pedestal "The Greatest Generation". They hated a lot of their earliest kids, "GenX". They doted and spoiled their later kids and early grandkids, "Millennial", then decided it was fun to blame them for how much they were doted upon/spoiled.
Boomers aren't even that special in that way that they've named themselves the "Baby Boomers", sure they were a massive population boom following a couple huge wars, but demographically speaking they mostly just put the planet back into the usual Malthusian cycle. There are more GenX and Millennials than Baby Boomers, because human birthrates trend towards the exponential. The Boomers aren't some big peak in the graph of human birthrates versus deathrates, they are a rise back towards "normalcy" after a giant trough.
The next generations that are supporting the Baby Boomers as they head into retirement and senescence aren't much "smaller", they are just less equipped, due to erosions in social contracts that the Boomers inherited, and overall a larger trend back towards greed than their parents. (In those cases, they are largely right that their parents were better them in general.)
(Also, the Boomers have been aware of climate change since the 70s. Yet another thing they've left to their kids and grandkids rather than tackle themselves.)
I suspect that it's "normal intergenerational gripes" except amplified by our modern super inflammatory media...
It seems like every generation can be viewed as heroic or decadent, depending on which lens you use - the Boomers lived through the Civil Rights mivement, stagflation and the end of the Cold War, but then the hippies ran up enormous debts and turned into greedy 80's business men. Their parents (the "Greatest Generation") survived the Great Depression and turned the US into an economic powerhouse for WW2, but also were horrifically racist and sexist by modern standards. Now Millenials are shifting to this modern world where you need to be hyper educated to get a job, they've been somewhat helicopter-parented (so they have all the anti-fragile problems) but on the other hand they tend to save more, they're better educated and more culturally sensitive...
I suspect when you're a journalist it's easy to take a biased sample and getting an unrepresentative result because of it.
I can ask my buddies who don't have cars why they don't have cars, and none of them will say it's empty pockets. Because my car-less buddies are a biased sample, software developer cyclists in central London.
How do we go about changing societal expectations to stop expecting perpetual growth? People aren't going to be happy it is no longer a given their children will do better than themselves, or even that they will be capable of taking care of them in their old age due to resource and economic crunches.
I'm all for taking action against climate change, but the 10% number is just pure fear mongering. Robert Rhode at Berkely did an excellent job of showing what the true risks are here:
As politicized as this climate change has become, I would hope to see more reasoned responses in the future - but given the current environment of discussion, I won't hold my breath.
Without perpetual growth wouldn't those who are not already well off have almost no hope of getting ahead? That is, it seems like currently the system only works for at least the middle class because people can invest in 401ks and mutual funds. If those were taken away then what would the non 1% have left?
Edit: To be clear, I mean this as an honest question. I see a lot of smart people arguing that expectations of growth need to change in order to tackle issues like global warming, but I don't see a scenario where that doesn't result in most people becoming serfs.
We don't. If those who want to fight climate change don't understand that economic growth is not an option but a requirement, then it doesn't get fought.
That said 10% in a century isn't that hard -- think of the different standard of life between 1914 and 1996. Even 10% poorer in 1996 would still be effing amazing, and we would likely have more than that without two world wars and a Spanish flue (also why I shifted it 104 years back).
Paywalled for me, but I presume that's "knock 10% off of what the US GDP otherwise would have been by the end of the century" and not "the US GDP at the end of the century will be 10% lower than it is now". That is, we'll have less growth than we would have had with a better climate, but we will still have growth.
In fact, what would US GDP growth be over 80 years? The real US GDP grew 900% from 1947 to 2017, which is 70 years. If we could do anything close to that over the next 80 years, but then we lose 10%, that's still pretty good.
I am interested by society's desire to blame an entire generation's worth of young people for how they turned out.
Millennials did not ruin the economy in 2008, make a college education cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, or impose 40 years of wage stagnation in this country. These kids and young adults are just a product of the environment that their parents and grandparents built for them.
We should instead talk more about what Gen Xers and Baby Boomers did for the fortunes of Millennials rather than how insufferable Millennials are.
I blame millenial journalists for writing click-baity articles blaming millenials for market shifts experienced by millenials and created by millenials. I don't read stupid generation-shaming crap from serious journalists in legitimate news outlets.
Yeah, I see boomers like my uncles talking about how millenials are the "participation trophy" generation, without any awareness that it was their generation handing out the participation trophies to millenials.
>make a college education cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, or impose 40 years of wage stagnation in this country.
Lets see if this exaggeration is upvoted or downvoted by HN whales.
Its a very sympathetic argument, but its not true. Curious how our overlords respond.
EDIT: Since I cant post, I'll respond here. Someone posted links saying-
> the College Board reports that a moderate college budget for an in-state public college for the 2017–2018 academic year averaged $25,290. A moderate budget at a private college averaged $50,900.
> college education cost hundreds of thousands of dollars
According to your source, this is 4x cheaper than the (200k+ that OP claimed)
And the wages have gone up, with inflation(from your link). Not sure if you should blame the government for this, but I don't see anyone in this thread complaining about Fiat currency policy.
I mean, that's all kind of bullshit, too. In the same sort of way that if you don't drive a Prius or aren't a vegan you contribute to climate change.
Gen X'ers and Baby Boomers didn't really do shit except live life in the time they did like Millennials and Gen Z'ers do now; it was the people in power who had impact.
There's too much pointing fingers in the wrong direction when it comes to these discussions. It wasn't my father who fucked my future over, though people elected during his time had significant impact on educational and housing policies today. You could say he voted for these things, but that's still painting an entire generation in the wrong light, sometimes you don't have a choice.
Imagine in the future blaming Millennials and Gen Z'ers for the problems in 2040 instead of blaming people like Trump and Macron. Incredible.
Two things that come to mind when I read articles like this.
The first one is what do you expect when the Federal Reserve target inflation rate is 2%. Over a 20, 30, or 40 year time span everything at least doubles in price.
The second thing that comes to mind is that nowadays everything seems to be a racket designed to extract as much money from a person as possible. All in the name of higher stock prices. Look at the number of things that are now subscription based. Meaning you never actually own anything.
There is another final thing that stuck in my head when reading the article. Who and how are "success" being defined. Just because someone doesn't own a house as big if not bigger than their parents does not mean they aren't successful. Same thing for cars, clothes, etc.
I consider myself fairly well-informed, but I just don't understand why it is considered good for people to own expensive cars.
Are people actually not getting where they need to go, or are they just making their existing cars last longer?
They are an "engine of the economy", but what does that mean? Is it possible to have a less wasteful engine of the economy? Can something abstract, like artwork, ever be an engine of the economy?
What would happen if the economy only produced stuff that we really want? Would that be bad, and if so, how?
The government has slowly killed the economy. As decades of accumulating onerous regulation, heavily distortionary policy, and over-taxation catch up with our economy.
Somehow "Have millennials killed X?" turned out to be a really good clickbait article format. I suspect that this is due to clickbait becoming widespread as millennials came of age. At this point it's just going on momentum.
Millennials started getting the vote in 2000. Many crucial elections since then have been extremely close. They had the opportunity to have the decisive say in outcomes. How's their track record of choices working out?
Only a small fraction of Millennials would have been able to vote in 2000, and depending on your definition of the generation (stop date of '95 or '00) the full group either got to vote for the first time in the 2014 midterms or will get to vote for the first time in the 2020 elections.
Millennials have made up a smaller, but growing demographic since 2000. What about the other, larger demographics? If you wanted us to make better choices, you shouldn't have left us with the current problems without properly equipping us. Now we're trying to solve today's issues as best we can given our circumstances all while you complain and moan. A thank you is all you need to say, really. We're bailing out your lifestyle and voting choices of the past at the cost of our own. We don't always get it right, but we're learning fast. Just be sure to step aside when the time comes so we can actually make some meaningful change in the world.
> Many crucial elections since then have been extremely close. They had the opportunity to have the decisive say in outcomes.
The one does not follow from the other. Even assuming that it's reasonable to consider a monolithic Millennial voting bloc, they may have been "extremely closely" outvoted.
This is an important thing to bring up but from a different perspective. Most millennials didn't want either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump in the last election. That lack of choice should not be blamed on a generation when the Clinton campaign subverted the DNC (and hence the popular candidate) and Trump was an unknown wildcard in a long list of crusty GOP candidates.
In 2000, the millenial voting bloc would have been like 1% of the total US voting population. Are you seriously laying the blame on 18 years old and not the 19 to 120 year old that make up almost all the votes? Also decisive in what way? Between Bush and Clinton? Or Obama and McCain? Trump or Clinton? Republican or Democrat? Why didn't previous generations make the "decisive" vote? Seems like whichever side you vote for, things don't get any better. Wars don't stop. And the rich get richer. But yes, lets blame those pesky 18 years old of 2000. Also, are millenials supposed to vote as a unit? I thought we were all individuals.
[+] [-] rademacher|7 years ago|reply
Anecdotal evidence shows that a lot of new grads with technical degrees are getting offers around $200k in the bay area and seattle (these are the other Millennials). By 5 years they're making more than many boomers did over a very successful 30+ year career. Clearly this is only a small subset of Millennials, but it is an example of concentration. I'm not sure whether this discrepancy between "classes" of new grads existed previously, does anyone have insight?
[+] [-] gammateam|7 years ago|reply
I enjoy being even more unrelatable when I just say "Yep." when people ask "Isn't that area expensive"
[+] [-] kepler|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|7 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] mkirklions|7 years ago|reply
At the same time, I'm not sure how you can reasonably say things like 'The cost of goods went up'.
If you want to blame government inflation, sure, but the cost of technology has plummeted in the last 10/20/30 years. Food is the cheapest its ever been, cost to move a mile cheapest, etc...
Its not genuine to speak that prices are going up.
[+] [-] intrasight|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Loughla|7 years ago|reply
I'm fascinated because when did owning a home with a family become 'not' an experience? Legitimately confused by this.
I have a house in a rural area (because of where I work) with a wife, kid, cat, and dog. Most of my friends are just aghast that I would choose to 'settle down' because I won't get any experiences at all. I mean, I'm not dead. . .
I don't get it.
[+] [-] ergothus|7 years ago|reply
Then, as people start to push back (prior to this article), we have off-hand mentions that every generation blames the younger/older generation.
But is this really equivalent? My (limited) understanding is that the Boomers were themselves quite exceptional - we're in the longest era of global-level peace, the Boomers themselves WERE a "boom" of population, the extended middle class of the 50s was an anomaly, etc. Add to this that Millennials face new issues in ways that other generations haven't: climate change is literally a sea-level change, education is more costly, communication is more global, and of course, for the US and many other countries, the next generation that will support them is much smaller rather than larger. Certainly there are parallels to previous generational conflicts, but I don't see a reason to shrug this off as just normal.
I'm GenX, and the articles when I was hitting the workforce were dismissive and condescending, but in a "aw, they're young and naive" as opposed to "they are failures as human beings" that I read in a lot of the Millennial coverage.
Does anyone know of studies into whether this IS just normal inter-generational gripes?
[+] [-] WorldMaker|7 years ago|reply
They venerated their parents and placed them on a pedestal "The Greatest Generation". They hated a lot of their earliest kids, "GenX". They doted and spoiled their later kids and early grandkids, "Millennial", then decided it was fun to blame them for how much they were doted upon/spoiled.
Boomers aren't even that special in that way that they've named themselves the "Baby Boomers", sure they were a massive population boom following a couple huge wars, but demographically speaking they mostly just put the planet back into the usual Malthusian cycle. There are more GenX and Millennials than Baby Boomers, because human birthrates trend towards the exponential. The Boomers aren't some big peak in the graph of human birthrates versus deathrates, they are a rise back towards "normalcy" after a giant trough.
The next generations that are supporting the Baby Boomers as they head into retirement and senescence aren't much "smaller", they are just less equipped, due to erosions in social contracts that the Boomers inherited, and overall a larger trend back towards greed than their parents. (In those cases, they are largely right that their parents were better them in general.)
(Also, the Boomers have been aware of climate change since the 70s. Yet another thing they've left to their kids and grandkids rather than tackle themselves.)
[+] [-] dragonwriter|7 years ago|reply
What does “global level peace” mean?
> the Boomers themselves WERE a "boom" of population,
True, but that hardly makes them exceptional.
> the extended middle class of the 50s was an anomaly
But, again, not one that makes the Boomers, who had nothing to do with cresting that, exceptional.
[+] [-] notStoicEnough|7 years ago|reply
It seems like every generation can be viewed as heroic or decadent, depending on which lens you use - the Boomers lived through the Civil Rights mivement, stagflation and the end of the Cold War, but then the hippies ran up enormous debts and turned into greedy 80's business men. Their parents (the "Greatest Generation") survived the Great Depression and turned the US into an economic powerhouse for WW2, but also were horrifically racist and sexist by modern standards. Now Millenials are shifting to this modern world where you need to be hyper educated to get a job, they've been somewhat helicopter-parented (so they have all the anti-fragile problems) but on the other hand they tend to save more, they're better educated and more culturally sensitive...
[+] [-] FiveSquared|7 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] tvanantwerp|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] michaelt|7 years ago|reply
I can ask my buddies who don't have cars why they don't have cars, and none of them will say it's empty pockets. Because my car-less buddies are a biased sample, software developer cyclists in central London.
[+] [-] makerofspoons|7 years ago|reply
How do we go about changing societal expectations to stop expecting perpetual growth? People aren't going to be happy it is no longer a given their children will do better than themselves, or even that they will be capable of taking care of them in their old age due to resource and economic crunches.
[+] [-] anarchimedes|7 years ago|reply
https://twitter.com/RARohde/status/1067375440661307393
As politicized as this climate change has become, I would hope to see more reasoned responses in the future - but given the current environment of discussion, I won't hold my breath.
[+] [-] harimau777|7 years ago|reply
Edit: To be clear, I mean this as an honest question. I see a lot of smart people arguing that expectations of growth need to change in order to tackle issues like global warming, but I don't see a scenario where that doesn't result in most people becoming serfs.
[+] [-] tomjen3|7 years ago|reply
That said 10% in a century isn't that hard -- think of the different standard of life between 1914 and 1996. Even 10% poorer in 1996 would still be effing amazing, and we would likely have more than that without two world wars and a Spanish flue (also why I shifted it 104 years back).
[+] [-] stcredzero|7 years ago|reply
If we move civilization to a solar system wide context, we could easily support a human population of a trillion.
[+] [-] BurningFrog|7 years ago|reply
10% is just 3-5 years of growth.
GDP would still be 10 times higher than today, assuming 3% growth.
[+] [-] AnimalMuppet|7 years ago|reply
In fact, what would US GDP growth be over 80 years? The real US GDP grew 900% from 1947 to 2017, which is 70 years. If we could do anything close to that over the next 80 years, but then we lose 10%, that's still pretty good.
[+] [-] drpgq|7 years ago|reply
That's an interesting stat.
[+] [-] jld|7 years ago|reply
Millennials did not ruin the economy in 2008, make a college education cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, or impose 40 years of wage stagnation in this country. These kids and young adults are just a product of the environment that their parents and grandparents built for them.
We should instead talk more about what Gen Xers and Baby Boomers did for the fortunes of Millennials rather than how insufferable Millennials are.
[+] [-] TheBeardKing|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ip26|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ModernMech|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] treespace8|7 years ago|reply
We are trying. Voting for progressive policies and people to grow the middle class. But we are a small voting block.
[+] [-] ataturk|7 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] mkirklions|7 years ago|reply
Lets see if this exaggeration is upvoted or downvoted by HN whales.
Its a very sympathetic argument, but its not true. Curious how our overlords respond.
EDIT: Since I cant post, I'll respond here. Someone posted links saying-
> the College Board reports that a moderate college budget for an in-state public college for the 2017–2018 academic year averaged $25,290. A moderate budget at a private college averaged $50,900.
> college education cost hundreds of thousands of dollars
According to your source, this is 4x cheaper than the (200k+ that OP claimed)
And the wages have gone up, with inflation(from your link). Not sure if you should blame the government for this, but I don't see anyone in this thread complaining about Fiat currency policy.
[+] [-] _blrj|7 years ago|reply
Gen X'ers and Baby Boomers didn't really do shit except live life in the time they did like Millennials and Gen Z'ers do now; it was the people in power who had impact.
There's too much pointing fingers in the wrong direction when it comes to these discussions. It wasn't my father who fucked my future over, though people elected during his time had significant impact on educational and housing policies today. You could say he voted for these things, but that's still painting an entire generation in the wrong light, sometimes you don't have a choice.
Imagine in the future blaming Millennials and Gen Z'ers for the problems in 2040 instead of blaming people like Trump and Macron. Incredible.
[+] [-] eaandkw|7 years ago|reply
The first one is what do you expect when the Federal Reserve target inflation rate is 2%. Over a 20, 30, or 40 year time span everything at least doubles in price.
The second thing that comes to mind is that nowadays everything seems to be a racket designed to extract as much money from a person as possible. All in the name of higher stock prices. Look at the number of things that are now subscription based. Meaning you never actually own anything.
There is another final thing that stuck in my head when reading the article. Who and how are "success" being defined. Just because someone doesn't own a house as big if not bigger than their parents does not mean they aren't successful. Same thing for cars, clothes, etc.
[+] [-] jeffdavis|7 years ago|reply
Are people actually not getting where they need to go, or are they just making their existing cars last longer?
They are an "engine of the economy", but what does that mean? Is it possible to have a less wasteful engine of the economy? Can something abstract, like artwork, ever be an engine of the economy?
What would happen if the economy only produced stuff that we really want? Would that be bad, and if so, how?
[+] [-] unknown|7 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] rchaud|7 years ago|reply
Reality: this comments section.
[+] [-] pitaj|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] HugoDaniel|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] timerol|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] napworth|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] blacksqr|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jld|7 years ago|reply
Even now, people 20-40 are a minority of the voting populace.
It is unfair to blame the outcome of all the elections, and hence the policies of the last 20 years, on a minority people eligible to vote.
[+] [-] lordnacho|7 years ago|reply
It's hard to make the case that they've been able to decide any generational issues yet.
[+] [-] kingbirdy|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Ithildin|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wool_gather|7 years ago|reply
The one does not follow from the other. Even assuming that it's reasonable to consider a monolithic Millennial voting bloc, they may have been "extremely closely" outvoted.
[+] [-] watwut|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] explorigin|7 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] 0xFFC|7 years ago|reply