Reading this article as a millennial really hits home as I remember entering the workforce as a teenager mid 2001 as soon as I could drive (months before 9/11), re-entering the workforce as a young adult early 2008 as soon as I had a degree (months before the great recession), then building a company as an adult for two years and launching it January 2020 (months before the end of the world).
There have been no breaks. Nothing has been easy. I don't really know what true success looks like... I struggle and by the skin of my teeth (and now my family's teeth) and the hits just keep coming. We have a house, but I literally fought for it with every ounce of effort I had and got extremely lucky.
This is our version of success; we enjoy rays of sunshine from the eyes of hurricanes.
Look at it another way - you are building a company and actually launched! Most people will never get there.
You have a house, while in the past it was easier, overall home ownership is something only 32% of our age group accomplished. 65% of all US residents will ever accomplish.
More importantly - you have a family! So far, I’d say you are doing great!
Can it be easier? Sure. However, while my own path hasn’t been rosy, I wouldn’t trade it - it makes us who we are and will make us more resilient in the future. Keep up the good work and never despair!
Also, another perspective on the growth. If your starting point is lower, it’s easier to grow by a larger percentage point. US in the 1980s was a pretty great place to live and consumption was already high. It’s that much harder to beat that (or even maintain).
I've had a similar trajectory. Graduated college in 2008. Just decided to purchase my first home a few months ago, signed the contract literally a few weeks before covid.
Same age as you, I remember graduating and then the entire global economy collapsing. It has left a lasting impression on my psyche.
That being said, I do think our generation will start taking political power soon-ish (decade maybe?) and policy will shift toward larger safety nets being the norm(1). My hope is that because of what we’ve seen, our future politicians will write policy accordingly.
(1)Totally open-minded to the fact that this might be wishful thinking.
Fellow millennial at apparently the same age. I agree with your sentiment. I remind myself that what goes around comes around. Boomers and GenXers bid housing prices up to absurd levels and stayed working longer than past generations (mainly because they failed to save when they could have and have to service debt that is unheard of in past generations). Eventually these assets will be poured back into the market and it will be a buyer’s market. Eventually they will retire and upper ranks will be ours for the taking. They won’t live forever - that wealth will disperse. Our best times are ahead. Theirs are behind. Stay strong and don’t play their game by overleveraging.
I graduated into the early 90s recession. It shaped my outlook in various ways. Took about 10 years to finally get into a respectable job, and then 9/11 killed that. Another half-decade of underperformance, another tenuous success, then 2008 killed that. Another 10 years to finally get out of debt and start to get a foothold, and now this. Still don't own a home, although that's partly by choice. So I sympathize on the one hand, and yet, for n recessions millennials have been through, I've been through n + 1, so the talk about how uniquely screwed they are rubs me the wrong way a little bit.
I am a young Xer, almost an old millennial, kind of on the cusp. I've wondered if this is a cognitive artifact of my age in the 90s, teens to 20, but I have asked older and even a few younger people and many have also expressed nostalgia for that decade. Boomers and much older Xers often agree.
My teens were rough anyway. It was not my personal best decade, but I would go back in a second... not necessarily literally but definitely to the zeitgeist.
I find myself unable to describe the optimism of that time to people who were not of age during it. The best I can do is encourage people to watch some old Star Trek TNG. You couldn't even write that today. Dark edgy music and culture was in, but that was an artifact of the optimism. Nobody wants a Nine Inch Nails or early Tool now because the world is darker than the music. Pretty Hate Machine would be journalism, not harmless cathartic emotional escape and fantasy.
For my money the optimism ended decisively on 9/11. The shift was incredibly deep and profound. We have never recovered, though a rally was attempted in the late oughts. That rally crashed into resentment driven identity politics; the alt-right and its fellow travelers or "cancel culture" on the other side. Superficial optimism doesn't stick and won't until we get past 9/11 and all it seemed to mean. The terrorists won.
You and I are in agreement - that day set the tone for America's future in:
* economics - on his way back to the fed reserve in NYC via helicopter in autumn 2001, Greenspan saw the rubble of WTC and decided to drop the fed funds rate, and it eventually hit 1% in 2004, which is why asset prices (real estate, stocks, bonds) are so high today and why we had a housing boom during that time (2004-2008)
* international policy - never ending war on "terror" (not that they decided on "terror" bc when you have a war on a country, you can define the end of the war; a war on "terror" can go on forever bc you can redefine "terror")
* culture / politics - democrat vs republican (and media fed into it bc it culture wars drive ratings)
Yeah...looks like al qaeda did more damage than we thought.
I am an 'old millenial' and have absolutely the same impression (and my personal life at that time was also a mixed bag, so it certainly is not personal nostalgia).
The time period of mid 90s until 9/11 should really receive far more attention. It feels like most of the world was on a much more optimistic and promising trajectory.
I think it was also the last time that we saw major, society-wide and significant technological progress happen in a short amount of time in developed countries: the early days of widespread adoption of the web and all of its implications.
At the same time, I sometimes wonder if many of the negative developments of the two decades afterwards might also be ascribed to the spreading adoption of the web and its unintended negative consequences to global sensemaking.
I think I am about the same age as you and agree completely. That optimistic world of the 90s (and 80s IMO) no longer exists. The country never did recover from 9/11 and has stumbled from one crisis to the next ever since - the War on Terror, Iraq War, Katrina, oil crisis, subprime mortgage meltdown, Occupy Wall St, college tuition debt crisis, and now the pandemic and current protests. Where it all ends I don't know.
I think you would have to look for additional sources or markers of your experience to explain this memory of yours. It is not just the decade nor your age at the time. In my recollection, cultural products like grunge and industrial music, or even the overall Gen-X slacker stereotype, did not come from a place of great optimism. They weren't ironic masks hiding a playful wink, they were sardonic expressions of angst and disappointment over a world that did not meet ideals.
For many, there was a palpable sense of hangover. That we were living in the ruins/wasteland of an already failing civilization, with very little control over the outcome for society nor for oneself. Much of the saccharine, optimistic content on TV could be seen another way, as almost delusional or perhaps as clumsy propaganda. It could only be enjoyed with a big dose of irony or an escapist suspension of disbelief.
I can only guess at all the factors which influence these different, parallel experiences of the time. Different regional cultures, different socio-economic backgrounds, difference in parent generation, differences in sibling/cohort ages, etc.
This thread resonates a lot having graduated in 2013. I've worked for several years in three major European cities — London, Cambridge and Brussels — on above average salaries as a data scientist in the financial sector. I'm also a former Samsung employee; I received a good hand from life's lottery.
Yet, a modest family home is out of my reach once childcare and other bills are considered. This is in sharp contrast to my parents who school without degrees, bought a 3-bedroom house in their early 20s and who are now both retired.
Well, it's hard to compete with the generation that grew up in post-war and full growth economy, fueled by huge technology gains and a country open to expansion. It was like all you had to do to have a good life was... be alive.
Things get less giddy and boundless (for people on the whole) when a country reaches middle age and there's not new jobs just for the asking. When people reminisce about "how resilient and capable we were back then", just remember that nothing hurts too bad when you've got a free ride on an elevator to the top floor.
And now consider southern Europe where it's our situation and wages are 1/2 what we have (though with more social services to take up the slack).
I actually don't think the data and graphs prove their point.
Millenials are young and so the appropriate comparison has to be to to other generations when they were the same age.
You can throw out half their graphs based in that point.
The remaining ones are cherry-picked to be misleading.
Growth in the overall economy, while good, does not indicate the absolute level of success. Would you have rather grown up in India where there's been much higher growth in the last few decades?
In general, real wages have only grown over time. Today, we benefit from all the growth of previous generations.
Median household income is not flat, but up steadily every decade. Yes, on the high end, it has grown even more (because a smart person can contribute more than in the past b/c less manual work, information tech).
But what no one says is that wages are up for lower incomes as well.
And, the safety net is bigger: government transfers for unemployment, food stamps, child tax credits, etc are WAY up compared to previous generations. Boomers barely got a dime.
Before the pandemic, the economy was absolutely the best it's ever been by a long shot. Why didn't they show an actual comparison of employment rates? Millennials would be dominating.
Millennials also dominate on education. Our lives are so much richer because we've more likely gone to college and can access so much information from our smart phones.
In the same way that news is mostly all the bad things happening around the world (another shooting, another disaster), journalism and politics is often about all things gone wrong in our society.
Consequently, nearly everything you read and hear about current times is exaggerated in a negative way. (Often for the good purpose of trying to improve it.)
This article is a perfect example.
Try to stay skeptical when everyone is saying our world is regressing to poverty and nastiness.
Because the truth is we have a vibrant and beautiful society that's damn near the best it's ever been. And the future holds even more promise.
This thread has quite a few people looking into rose tinted mirrors and forgetting that the US Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War and oil crisis and the computer/internet (!) revolution happened.
All the people saying riffs of "OK, Boomer" should go visit BLM protest and ask people there how envious they are of their grandparents.
I think many white people would say they are envious of the opportunities that their parents and grandparents had laid at their feet. I think many non-white people would say the opposite. I think this is the crux of the issues - they persist across generations.
I made this comment on a thread about people having fewer babies nowadays, and I think its relevant here:
Millenial here, born in mid-80s. Have seen or experienced:
> dot-com boom / bust (junior high)
> 9/11 (high school)
> War on Terror (college)
> student loans (probably for the rest of my life)
> the worst recession since the Great Depression, and the lasting economic / career effects that never goes away when you go through that (right when I graduated college)
> the divisive culture wars between old / young, rich / poor, establishment / anti-establishment, etc
> Trump as president
> Covid-19
> narcissistic boomer parents
> narcissistic boomers in all levels and areas of institutional leadership whose baseline modus operandi is incompetence, corruption, and greed
> and a lot more that stresses me out
From my perspective, the world is back-sliding - everything feels like its getting worse, not better. Economic data backs this - real wages are level while cost of living is increasing.
And you wonder why we are putting have having children?
It's because we do not know what economic optimism and financial security feel like.
Edit - the last 20 years notwithstanding, maybe there is still some things to be optimistic about:
> people are waking up (just look at the comments in this thread)
> mainstream media is finally talking about this
> if you are reading this, you have access to some kind of computing device, which means you're richer than most in the world
All in all, what really sucks is we our standard of living won't be as comfortable as when we were kids, and the same will probably be true for our kids.
I question whether these generational comparisons are using the right statistics. In the very least they don't seem to paint a complete picture.
Maybe I am biased because I'm a very successful millennial. I have the world at my hands. Access to written knowledge from any point in the history of time. Tens of thousands of video games and movies available for under $10 and/or a small subscription price. I can learn the arts, pick up any hobby, or even teach myself to code for free. I can fly around the world and stay in hostels in other countries at the same price (or cheaper than) I pay rent in the US. If I run out of tp it is delivered to my doorstep the next day.
Sure, I make a lot of money and still can hardly afford a house. I graduated with more student loan debt than both my parents combined. They had different experiences in those regards. But I wouldn't trade my life in this millennial generation, for a life in the boomer generation, for anything.
Interesting point. It's similar to how we consider inflation with regards to technological advancements. A cell phone still costs the same it did 10 years ago, but it's 5 times are fast now, so it actually got cheaper for that purpose.
The car you can buy today is many times better than any car you could've bought 50 years ago. Relatively, both you and your parents could buy a car, and they may have more money to spare than you would today. But they were definitely unable to buy a car that's anywhere near as good as what you can buy today.
You are biased due to that. There aren't that many high-paying jobs in the economy overall. Home ownership was usually the only tangible payoff for ordinary people.
Don't let the downvotes get you down. Your understanding of the opportunities in front of you coupled with a positive-can-do attitude is what the world needs right now.
This is a fairly narrow view of the issue. For one, I think most people throughout history would refuse to trade places with previous generations, with maybe the main exception being those that were significantly impacted by war. And secondly, the article is focused on economic prospects of our generation, many of the ramifications of which will not play out for decades. Millennials are still relatively young. Being poor in your 20s is a lot different than being poor in your 60s.
A few other things to consider. The TP delivered to your house was done so by someone working a low paying gig work job. There is a good chance, that like you, they graduated with significant student load debt. How do you think they feel about their economic future? And in 30 years, what is social security and medicare going to look like? We are racking up major deficits to deal with the impact covid-19. Climate change is going to be an issue in our lifetime, and I strongly believe that if our generation does not tackle this issue, that it will significantly alter the course of humanity. And to add to all of this, we are already shifting towards populism in our politics. If that shift continues due to economic issues of subsequent generations, things will get weird.
"I have the world at my hands. Access to written knowledge from any point in the history of time. Tens of thousands of video games and movies available for under $10 and/or a small subscription price. I can learn the arts, pick up any hobby, or even teach myself to code for free. I can fly around the world and stay in hostels in other countries at the same price (or cheaper than) I pay rent in the US. If I run out of tp it is delivered to my doorstep the next day."
Every other generation has all this now, too. But they also have houses and less debt.
Yeah, this makes sense. I got it especially bad, since I joined startups that raised a huge amount of money on promises of riches, and then failed after burning through hundreds of millions of dollars. The founders cashed out before the companies imploded, but regular employees were left holding the bag. I have lots of illiquid startup stock that's now worthless, after about 10 years in Silicon Valley.
I do feel like the cards are stacked against everyone who isn't already rich. The system is designed to help keep the rich people rich, and make sure the poor stay poor.
I'm excited about the uprising, because we might finally be seeing a period of time that brings about real change. I'd love to see politicians abolished and replaced with real direct digital democracy. Politicians are a leftover from the colonial era when government representatives were necessary because it wasn't possible to have real democracy.
If you were fortunate enough to get multiple jobs in Silicon Valley - even if they didn’t go as well as they could have - it’s hard to honestly claim the cards are stacked against you. Most people drew a much weaker hand.
I think about two friends of mine. Both got slammed by the 2001 recession. At one point they were sleeping on couches. They managed in the last ten years to get good paying jobs, 90/120k a year. And when they look at their budget taxes eat almost half.
And then there is a friend who managed to hop skip and keep a decent job and stuff money away tax protected. He's made more off capital gains than he's made from working.
The whole system is set up to allow wealth to accumulate no matter the state of the real economy. While preventing people with earned income from 'breaking out' and competing with the wealthy and their children.
Debt and overleverage is stealing from the future. We got into 2020 with nearly every corporate in america deep into debt which used to finance buybacks.
The last 3 years of profit and growth were stolen from the future by the CEOs and past shareholders of these companies, and now the Fed is bailing them out by encouraging even more debt and leverage during coronavirus crisis.
The problem starts with government. No one in leadership among any of the parties has shown any real concern for debt and have been loading up one debt for decades. The only politically acceptable solution to that debt is to slowly inflate it away. Any other solution will be divisive. So the government loads up on debt and inflates it away, keeping interest rates lower for longer than they should. Then it filters down to corporations and individuals. Interest rates are low and debt requirements are lax, and if you aren’t willing to take on debt, you will be outbid by someone who is.
I expect deflation in the near term, and tremendous inflation in the long term.
[+] [-] netsectoday|5 years ago|reply
There have been no breaks. Nothing has been easy. I don't really know what true success looks like... I struggle and by the skin of my teeth (and now my family's teeth) and the hits just keep coming. We have a house, but I literally fought for it with every ounce of effort I had and got extremely lucky.
This is our version of success; we enjoy rays of sunshine from the eyes of hurricanes.
[+] [-] sologoub|5 years ago|reply
You have a house, while in the past it was easier, overall home ownership is something only 32% of our age group accomplished. 65% of all US residents will ever accomplish.
More importantly - you have a family! So far, I’d say you are doing great!
Can it be easier? Sure. However, while my own path hasn’t been rosy, I wouldn’t trade it - it makes us who we are and will make us more resilient in the future. Keep up the good work and never despair!
Also, another perspective on the growth. If your starting point is lower, it’s easier to grow by a larger percentage point. US in the 1980s was a pretty great place to live and consumption was already high. It’s that much harder to beat that (or even maintain).
[+] [-] tenaciousDaniel|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] darkteflon|5 years ago|reply
Laugh, and sob quietly into your pillow at 3am.
[+] [-] sharkweek|5 years ago|reply
That being said, I do think our generation will start taking political power soon-ish (decade maybe?) and policy will shift toward larger safety nets being the norm(1). My hope is that because of what we’ve seen, our future politicians will write policy accordingly.
(1)Totally open-minded to the fact that this might be wishful thinking.
[+] [-] cko|5 years ago|reply
But doesn't every generation have a once every decade recession?
Though ours is accompanied by two major expenses (housing education) rising way faster than inflation.
[+] [-] voisin|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Proven|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] rdiddly|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] game_the0ry|5 years ago|reply
The more relevant discussion is wealth inequality in general across generations. Plenty of broke boomers too.
[+] [-] api|5 years ago|reply
I am a young Xer, almost an old millennial, kind of on the cusp. I've wondered if this is a cognitive artifact of my age in the 90s, teens to 20, but I have asked older and even a few younger people and many have also expressed nostalgia for that decade. Boomers and much older Xers often agree.
My teens were rough anyway. It was not my personal best decade, but I would go back in a second... not necessarily literally but definitely to the zeitgeist.
I find myself unable to describe the optimism of that time to people who were not of age during it. The best I can do is encourage people to watch some old Star Trek TNG. You couldn't even write that today. Dark edgy music and culture was in, but that was an artifact of the optimism. Nobody wants a Nine Inch Nails or early Tool now because the world is darker than the music. Pretty Hate Machine would be journalism, not harmless cathartic emotional escape and fantasy.
For my money the optimism ended decisively on 9/11. The shift was incredibly deep and profound. We have never recovered, though a rally was attempted in the late oughts. That rally crashed into resentment driven identity politics; the alt-right and its fellow travelers or "cancel culture" on the other side. Superficial optimism doesn't stick and won't until we get past 9/11 and all it seemed to mean. The terrorists won.
[+] [-] game_the0ry|5 years ago|reply
You and I are in agreement - that day set the tone for America's future in:
* economics - on his way back to the fed reserve in NYC via helicopter in autumn 2001, Greenspan saw the rubble of WTC and decided to drop the fed funds rate, and it eventually hit 1% in 2004, which is why asset prices (real estate, stocks, bonds) are so high today and why we had a housing boom during that time (2004-2008)
* international policy - never ending war on "terror" (not that they decided on "terror" bc when you have a war on a country, you can define the end of the war; a war on "terror" can go on forever bc you can redefine "terror")
* culture / politics - democrat vs republican (and media fed into it bc it culture wars drive ratings)
Yeah...looks like al qaeda did more damage than we thought.
[+] [-] msamwald|5 years ago|reply
The time period of mid 90s until 9/11 should really receive far more attention. It feels like most of the world was on a much more optimistic and promising trajectory.
I think it was also the last time that we saw major, society-wide and significant technological progress happen in a short amount of time in developed countries: the early days of widespread adoption of the web and all of its implications.
At the same time, I sometimes wonder if many of the negative developments of the two decades afterwards might also be ascribed to the spreading adoption of the web and its unintended negative consequences to global sensemaking.
[+] [-] Jeema101|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] saltcured|5 years ago|reply
For many, there was a palpable sense of hangover. That we were living in the ruins/wasteland of an already failing civilization, with very little control over the outcome for society nor for oneself. Much of the saccharine, optimistic content on TV could be seen another way, as almost delusional or perhaps as clumsy propaganda. It could only be enjoyed with a big dose of irony or an escapist suspension of disbelief.
I can only guess at all the factors which influence these different, parallel experiences of the time. Different regional cultures, different socio-economic backgrounds, difference in parent generation, differences in sibling/cohort ages, etc.
[+] [-] cgshep|5 years ago|reply
Yet, a modest family home is out of my reach once childcare and other bills are considered. This is in sharp contrast to my parents who school without degrees, bought a 3-bedroom house in their early 20s and who are now both retired.
What went wrong?
[+] [-] ghiculescu|5 years ago|reply
I re-read The Sun Also Rises[1] yesterday. You could change the names and it'd be the story of plenty of people I know today. History repeats itself.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sun_Also_Rises - if you haven't read it, it's the best book.
[+] [-] voisin|5 years ago|reply
Just hoping I can’t say the same thing about Steinbeck’s books in the next few years.
[+] [-] supernova87a|5 years ago|reply
Things get less giddy and boundless (for people on the whole) when a country reaches middle age and there's not new jobs just for the asking. When people reminisce about "how resilient and capable we were back then", just remember that nothing hurts too bad when you've got a free ride on an elevator to the top floor.
And now consider southern Europe where it's our situation and wages are 1/2 what we have (though with more social services to take up the slack).
[+] [-] collective-intl|5 years ago|reply
Millenials are young and so the appropriate comparison has to be to to other generations when they were the same age.
You can throw out half their graphs based in that point.
The remaining ones are cherry-picked to be misleading.
Growth in the overall economy, while good, does not indicate the absolute level of success. Would you have rather grown up in India where there's been much higher growth in the last few decades?
In general, real wages have only grown over time. Today, we benefit from all the growth of previous generations.
Median household income is not flat, but up steadily every decade. Yes, on the high end, it has grown even more (because a smart person can contribute more than in the past b/c less manual work, information tech).
But what no one says is that wages are up for lower incomes as well.
And, the safety net is bigger: government transfers for unemployment, food stamps, child tax credits, etc are WAY up compared to previous generations. Boomers barely got a dime.
Before the pandemic, the economy was absolutely the best it's ever been by a long shot. Why didn't they show an actual comparison of employment rates? Millennials would be dominating.
Millennials also dominate on education. Our lives are so much richer because we've more likely gone to college and can access so much information from our smart phones.
In the same way that news is mostly all the bad things happening around the world (another shooting, another disaster), journalism and politics is often about all things gone wrong in our society.
Consequently, nearly everything you read and hear about current times is exaggerated in a negative way. (Often for the good purpose of trying to improve it.)
This article is a perfect example.
Try to stay skeptical when everyone is saying our world is regressing to poverty and nastiness.
Because the truth is we have a vibrant and beautiful society that's damn near the best it's ever been. And the future holds even more promise.
-- A young millenial
[+] [-] sukilot|5 years ago|reply
All the people saying riffs of "OK, Boomer" should go visit BLM protest and ask people there how envious they are of their grandparents.
[+] [-] voisin|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] game_the0ry|5 years ago|reply
Millenial here, born in mid-80s. Have seen or experienced: > dot-com boom / bust (junior high)
> 9/11 (high school)
> War on Terror (college)
> student loans (probably for the rest of my life)
> the worst recession since the Great Depression, and the lasting economic / career effects that never goes away when you go through that (right when I graduated college)
> the divisive culture wars between old / young, rich / poor, establishment / anti-establishment, etc
> Trump as president
> Covid-19
> narcissistic boomer parents
> narcissistic boomers in all levels and areas of institutional leadership whose baseline modus operandi is incompetence, corruption, and greed
> and a lot more that stresses me out
From my perspective, the world is back-sliding - everything feels like its getting worse, not better. Economic data backs this - real wages are level while cost of living is increasing.
And you wonder why we are putting have having children? It's because we do not know what economic optimism and financial security feel like.
Edit - the last 20 years notwithstanding, maybe there is still some things to be optimistic about:
> people are waking up (just look at the comments in this thread)
> mainstream media is finally talking about this
> if you are reading this, you have access to some kind of computing device, which means you're richer than most in the world
All in all, what really sucks is we our standard of living won't be as comfortable as when we were kids, and the same will probably be true for our kids.
[+] [-] elhudy|5 years ago|reply
Maybe I am biased because I'm a very successful millennial. I have the world at my hands. Access to written knowledge from any point in the history of time. Tens of thousands of video games and movies available for under $10 and/or a small subscription price. I can learn the arts, pick up any hobby, or even teach myself to code for free. I can fly around the world and stay in hostels in other countries at the same price (or cheaper than) I pay rent in the US. If I run out of tp it is delivered to my doorstep the next day.
Sure, I make a lot of money and still can hardly afford a house. I graduated with more student loan debt than both my parents combined. They had different experiences in those regards. But I wouldn't trade my life in this millennial generation, for a life in the boomer generation, for anything.
[+] [-] luckylion|5 years ago|reply
The car you can buy today is many times better than any car you could've bought 50 years ago. Relatively, both you and your parents could buy a car, and they may have more money to spare than you would today. But they were definitely unable to buy a car that's anywhere near as good as what you can buy today.
[+] [-] ratbert|5 years ago|reply
https://danielmiessler.com/projects/reading/summary-the-war-...
[+] [-] xd|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] maxerickson|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] qqqwerty|5 years ago|reply
A few other things to consider. The TP delivered to your house was done so by someone working a low paying gig work job. There is a good chance, that like you, they graduated with significant student load debt. How do you think they feel about their economic future? And in 30 years, what is social security and medicare going to look like? We are racking up major deficits to deal with the impact covid-19. Climate change is going to be an issue in our lifetime, and I strongly believe that if our generation does not tackle this issue, that it will significantly alter the course of humanity. And to add to all of this, we are already shifting towards populism in our politics. If that shift continues due to economic issues of subsequent generations, things will get weird.
[+] [-] george_morgan|5 years ago|reply
Every other generation has all this now, too. But they also have houses and less debt.
[+] [-] sprafa|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] robbyt|5 years ago|reply
What can you do to help more people become as financially successful as you are?
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] 4636760295|5 years ago|reply
I do feel like the cards are stacked against everyone who isn't already rich. The system is designed to help keep the rich people rich, and make sure the poor stay poor.
I'm excited about the uprising, because we might finally be seeing a period of time that brings about real change. I'd love to see politicians abolished and replaced with real direct digital democracy. Politicians are a leftover from the colonial era when government representatives were necessary because it wasn't possible to have real democracy.
[+] [-] ghiculescu|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Gibbon1|5 years ago|reply
And then there is a friend who managed to hop skip and keep a decent job and stuff money away tax protected. He's made more off capital gains than he's made from working.
The whole system is set up to allow wealth to accumulate no matter the state of the real economy. While preventing people with earned income from 'breaking out' and competing with the wealthy and their children.
[+] [-] gonzo41|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] bronzeage|5 years ago|reply
The last 3 years of profit and growth were stolen from the future by the CEOs and past shareholders of these companies, and now the Fed is bailing them out by encouraging even more debt and leverage during coronavirus crisis.
[+] [-] voisin|5 years ago|reply
I expect deflation in the near term, and tremendous inflation in the long term.
[+] [-] bagacrap|5 years ago|reply