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Comment by mcphage | Hacker News Reader

Of course they are.

(1) College is mandatory for a lot more jobs, and college costs a lot more than it used to.

(2) Houses cost a lot more than they used to, so more people are renting, thus locking them out of that route of asset building.

(3) Jobs are harder to come by, and pay worse.

(4) Maybe you consider it unnecessary, but there are a lot more monthly expenses (internet, cellular phone) than there used to be.

So expenses are up, incomes are down, and wealth building is blocked off. I don't see how the conclusion would be anything else, with merely a moment's thought.

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> I don't see how the conclusion would be anything else, with merely a moment's thought.

You'd be surprised how many people, even with all the actual data on the subject, refuse to accept that millenials are 'worse off', citing technology advances or whatever.

That being said, we are just returning to the 'normal' state of things. The reduction in inequality after WWII and subsequent economic boom was the exception in human economic history, we're simply reverting to the mean. Thomas Piketty and others point out that inequality is increasing and while that's true, we've been there before.

Since there's not a whole lot more to say, here's a great Piketty related article by Robert Solow (Nobel winning economist, known for the Solow model of economic growth): https://newrepublic.com/article/117429/capital-twenty-first-...

So you're sayin' we need a world war.

That we send the Boomers to. /s

Seriously though, during dinner last night my wife and I (and my parents in their late 50s/early 60s) watched the Fox News Town Hall with Sanders and Clinton. They could not fathom how worse off people our age (early 30s/late 20s) have it compared to them. Even after rattling off college costs, inability to secure a home, stagnant wages, poor job prospects, it was incredulous to them. "It can't possibly be that bad!"

Is it an education issue? Perhaps. I think it'll get fixed the hard way though: one obituary at a time. Until then, we'll need a whole lot more social activism out there.

I upvoted you because I get the humour.

We need to reverse the trend. Otherwise, eventually, it will lead to violence, as many observers have predicted over the years (and it did lead to revolutions in many countries years ago, and even the Arab spring more recently).

Ways to do it:

- Stop restricting competition through laws that limit entry into various sectors (there's an absurd amount of laws which serve no use other than protecting big business interests)

- Heavy taxes on rent-seeking. There's an absurd amount of rent seeking in our economy, especially when it comes to commercial real estate in urban areas, patents, and many other behaviours (the tab above can be considered 'rent-seeking' since it introduces inefficiencies that favour incumbents)

- Estate taxes. While we love antidotes of the middle-class entrepreneur becoming a billionaire, it's the exception to the rule. While there is a lot of churn and mobility amongst the billionaire class, when you take the top 1% as a whole, they, as a group, are increasing their lead over the rest of society. Yes someone who has $50 million in the family can turn it into a billion. And someone with a billion can lose enough to go back to being a multi-millionaire. But the upper classes in general, due to their large real estate holdings and ability to seek rents, generally stay rich. If one family falls, those assets are likely incorporated into another family. Dynastic wealth doesn't always last, but the 1% generally stays the 1%, due to various dynamics.

- Real progressive taxation. While the lower classes pay lower percentages of income tax, it's stacked against them because their current rates still make up a larger percentage of their cost of living allowances. Not to mention, upper classes have more investment vehicles and tax avoidance vehicles at their disposal.

Anyhow, there's much more to say about it, but what it comes down to is, unless we stop the trend, nothing's going to get better, no matter how much we wish it.

I'm glad to see some forward thinking proposals that aren't simply "basic income!" Though I assume you'd add basic income to your list?

I think basic income would be a great idea. There's plenty of other things which I think need to come first. I'd hate for 'basic income' to become the new welfare, and for it to basically subsidize corporations who pay the lower classes minimum wage or less.

There's so many structural issues which serve to increase inequality right now...

Most of his solutions are just basic income in disguise.

Not that that makes them wrong.

> Dynastic wealth doesn't always last, but the 1% generally stays the 1%, due to various dynamics.

Seems more accurate that dynastic wealth doesn't usually last[1][2][3]

[1] http://time.com/money/3925308/rich-families-lose-wealth/

[2] http://www.fa-mag.com/news/why-wealth-disappears-8227.html

[3] http://money.cnn.com/2014/06/25/luxury/family-wealth/

1% is a catchy metric, but i think it hides the scale of inequality. $32000/year or so puts you in the top 1%. It really ought to be more like 0.0001%, but it doesn't have quite the same ring.

So, the 62 richest own as much as the poorest 3,652,500,000. Gates and Buffet are interesting, with the philosophy of, give your kids enough to make something of themselves, but not so much they make nothing of themselves. The waltons on the other hand, are definitely shooting for dynastic wealth.

There's a (very) rare chance of getting super rich. There's a possibility of being the kind of person that wants dynastic wealth, so some percent of those super rich are going to have super rich families. Kennedy, Rockefeller, Mellon. But it tends to be dilluting after a while, there are thousands of DuPonts as far as i can tell.

I guess the point i'm making, some superrich will be effective in creating dynastic wealth (they have so far anyway) That, in and of itself isn't a big deal. All the wealth in the world is around $240 trillion. How much of that are we ok with being locked up in a dynasty or 10? How tall can that spike be and have a working economy? In the US the dynasts only control 500 billion or so, so maybe not a big deal, it's not that big of a slice of the pie.

I dunno. It'll be interesting.

I think you're missing a zero.

The top ten or so is about right, i just eyeballed http://www.forbes.com/families/list/#tab:overall

i guess it's more like $550,000,000,000 but it was just a casual observation. The rest of the list probably averages around $3,000,000,000 , so another $550 billion there.

Primogeniture with entailments is the best way to maintain dynastic wealth. There may be other ways, but historically that combo has worked.

I'd be curious what wealth levels they are looking at, what they consider 'rich', and at what point the wealth is 'lost'. Because I highly doubt the majority of families who are worth > $500 million run that down to 'zero'.

What holds true for families who have > $1 million, doesn't necessarily hold true for families who have > $500 million. Dynastic wealth in Europe usually means owning private banks, wineries, châteaux, lands, etc... In the US, I'd be thinking of families who are large landowners, and have massive amounts of private wealth.

We're not talking about people who gained wealth from a single business in the patriarch/matriarch's lifetime, but rather people whose entire wealth derives from rent-seeking/inheritance.

The 1% is more of a euphemism for the top 0.01%. We're not talking about anyone who, at any point, was ever 'working class'. Steve Jobs' and Bill Gates' wealth probably will disappear; the Rockefellers, Mellons and Rothschilds of this world have done a comparatively good job at holding on to wealth. And there's far more of them than there are rich entrepreneurs... When you talk about inherited wealth, there's plenty of families who aren't on the Forbes' list, still worth billions.

And one note - as many economists have stated, dynastic wealth is still rather young in the US. Historically, in Europe the upper classes derived much of their wealth from land and property, which in Europe is comparatively very expensive because of its scarcity relative to population. For most of the US' history, land has been comparatively cheap. Also, the US has at various times broken up monopolies and redistributed wealth much more radically than western Europe. The US' relative equality is due to its socialist tendencies at various points in history.

Except this has been the state of things even before WWII. Literally since the start of the US and possibly even before (haven't done enough research to say definitively) the overall earnings of each generation have been greater than the one before. Until now. Think about that. We've had 2 world wars and a civil war and millennials are the first generation in the life of the country to do worse than their parents.

Wat?

Are people like, forgetting the great Dust Bowl or something?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust_Bowl

An entire generation of Americans left the Farms and went for the cities, only to learn that the Cities have entered the Great Depression.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Depression

And the cities had no help for the entire generation of farmers who lost everything. This time stands in contrast to the "Roaring Twenties", a time of plenty and a booming economy that the US has almost never seen before.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roaring_Twenties

Someone here has been drinking too much of that Rubio Kool-aid. Americans have had plenty of generation-defining tough times in our history. We are strong because of surviving through it, learning about the problems, and working to make the country better afterwards. But that "economical reset" button has been pushed several times in our history.

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In "Game of Thrones" terms, the Baby Boomers were born in the "great long spring", and have only known prosperity their whole life. They were born in a great time, a world rebuilt by the Greatest Generation (who grew up through the Dust Bowl AND Great Depression, then left to fight WW2 and then set the economic conditions for the post-war economic miracle).

But now fall is upon us, and the historians are remembering that yes, Winter is coming. And it is the millennials who have to now work through the winter that our parents don't remember ever existing... but our grandparents may remember the tougher times they had.

The missing piece is "learning about the problems and working to make the country better". It's hard not to feel that a significant number of elected officials often have the opposite approach - ignore the facts/research and work to line the pockets of their benefactors.

The main issue is that the two primary factions of US Politicians have grossly different ideas of what will and what won't make the country better.

Then 2008 happens and everyone is right AND everyone is wrong. A unique blend of too-much regulation AND not-enough regulation hits the nation and everything goes to crap. Republicans continue to point at the too much regulation (US Government encouraging loans, which helped fuel the sub-crime mortgages which created the bubble in the first place), while Democrats continue to point at too little regulation (AIG creating Credit Default Swaps on the "dark market", hidden away from regulators, which insured CDOs of CDOs of Mortgaged backed securities which fueled the housing bubble).

When in fact, both Republicans and Democrats are correct here. Government probably shouldn't have been doing some things, and the government probably should have been doing other things instead. But the parties are so locked into the mindset of "Government should do things" vs "Government shouldn't do things" that its hard to actually get any agreement anymore.

Anyway, that's how I see things: the two factions of US Politics are focused on creating arguments for the two primary stances on virtually any issue that occurs in politics: whether government should do something about a particular issue, or whether government should NOT do something about a particular issue.

That's good, and in fact, its great that people disagree because that's how we learn as a country. The problem is now the political wheels and deals have died off, because people have lost faith in the system. People need to start agreeing and creating consensus across the aisle so that the government can start doing stuff (be it rolling back poorly-implemented government programs, or pushing forward key beneficial government programs)

No ones forgetting about the Great Depression nor implying that there haven't also been other tough times. But the point remains that from a perspective of lifetime earnings today we are worse off than we have ever been. The Great Depression wiped away billions if not trillions of dollars of worth but from an economic perspective those dollars were already earned. We can debate all day whether having gained and lost a million dollars is better than having never gained that money to begin with.

Also the Great Depression only lasted 10 years to begin with meaning that it didn't even affect a majority of that generations prime earning years. Coupled with the fact that it was immediately preceded and succeeded by periods of incredible growth and you see why you're point isn't really accurate.

> But the point remains that from a perspective of lifetime earnings today we are worse off than we have ever been. The Great Depression wiped away billions if not trillions of dollars of worth but from an economic perspective those dollars were already earned.

Did you not read my post? I started with the Great Dust Bowl, which completely eradicated an entire generation of farmers. Eight years of drought was a natural disaster on an unfathomable scale.

Look, if you were born in 1915, you'd have finished high school right in time for the Dust Bowl. Your entire family's profession of "Farming" or "Ranching" is utterly destroyed. Then, you'd move to the city to look for a job, only to learn that the Great Depression started and there was no hope for you here.

You're 20 years old who only knows how to farm. Its 1935. Current networth: $0. Good luck finding a job during the Great Depression.

If you're not a farmer and were a city-folk for those years... well now its 1935 and all these dumb homeless, jobless farmers are taking the jobs in the city, leaving no jobs for you. Of course, its the Great Depression and nobody has a job, so maybe you shouldn't be blaming the farmers.

In either case, you'd now spend several years homeless, moving between Hoover-villes and shanty towns across the nation, until Pearl Harbor happened and everyone was drafted into the military. You were then forced to fight against either Hitler or the Japs in the bloodiest war the world has ever known.

You're now 30 years old, and its 1945. Current networth: $0. That's if you're a lucky one and you weren't killed or maimed during WW2.

Now you've come home from the war, and the postwar economic boom is beginning to start finally, but the country now raises taxes all the way to 90%+ to pay off the WW2 Debt. Good luck building a networth with that kind of tax.

You're now 35 years old and its 1950. Taxes are high, but you finally have a networth. You finally feel what prosperity feels like, after a pretty tough life, and then father a naive generation that we now call "The Baby Boomers". A group of kids who are so naive that even today in their 60s, they believe in "Get a college education, you'll get a job" and ideals like "children always grow up in better times than their parents".

Facts which are pretty much exclusively true for only the Boomers.... and only because the Greatest Generation planted the seeds for their prosperity.

I like your comment about the boomers. They are very naive in deed. Work hard and everythings fine...sure...I will get and burn what is left of oil, coal and gas and leave tons of debt to the next generation and when im old, ill tell them, they "dont work hard enough".

No ones forgetting about the Great Depression...

Anyone who ever recommended or used consumer credit forgot everything important about it.

Nah man. Just the people who hate on Fractional-reserve banking.

Nothing is wrong with consumers using credit. But when banks use credit (far above and beyond the arbitrary 20% number that the Fed has set), then a failure at one bank can cascade against the rest of the banks in the country.

People have forgotten that the massive decentralization and massive deflation of the 1930s created the conditions of the Great Depression. Tiny banks were far more correlated with each other due to shoddy lending practices.

-------------

People calling for the Gold Standard have forgotten the lessons of the Great Depression. Banning Gold from US Citizens was a major step towards curing the Great Depression: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_6102

Once Gold was no longer in circulation, the Fed was able to expand the money supply by printing more dollars than there was Gold to back it. In the coming years, the US would start pulling itself out of the depression caused by Gold Hoarding and loose fiscal policy.

Honestly, it was a similar strategy as QE or dropping interest rates that was employed in 2008: the goal was to expand the monetary supply to pump us out of a potential Depression.

If anything, its credit that allows us to get out of economic shocks like that. All the Libertarian Gold Bugs seem to forget the lesson of the 1930s however...

This is like saying that because Rome had slaves and people were fed to lions in the arena, the dark ages were 'better'...

Progress is supposed to continue, and we should have higher hopes than comparing our current lot to ages which were objectively pretty horrible... We've literally undone the progress made since 1950, and you're arguing that's OK because at least it's better than the 1800s or whatever.

It ultimately boils down to the tragedy of the commons. If you look at the postwar WW2 era, the commons were flourishing, due to (in no small part) government spending.

The meme of Keynesian economic theory created this concept of "in the long run, we're all dead". So effectively, the baby boomer generation leveraged future generations' well being. You can't borrow now without giving something up in the future, there will always be an equivalent exchange.

I'm not arguing that at all. My point is simply that we haven't undone the progress made since the 50's, we've undone the progress made since the country was founded. I complete agree that progress should continue. The issue is it's not. We are in unprecedented territory right now.

Sorry, sounded like you were arguing for the status quo.

> We are in unprecedented territory right now.

We are but we aren't. Regression in equality is unprecedented, but inequality isn't. We fixed the problem of inequality, then subsequently politicians convinced us to let them unfix it, to our own detriment.

We know the solutions, people just don't want to implement them. Money controls media, which tells people what they want. 'Establishment' politicians buy votes with handouts and shiny objects, all the while dismantling the welfare state and passing laws which increase inequality. I guarantee if people voted on every bill that went through Congress, the US would look far, far different...

Not for nothing, parents are also living longer so I imagine wealth is being used at a greater proportion than it is being passed on.

Your premise is simply not true. Study actual history.

This reverse in inequality isn't some inevitable fact of economies, but a result of changing government policies, globalization, and the loss of power of labor, engineers, and professionals.

Talking about means and normal distributions in this context is far too reductive.

> This reverse in inequality isn't some inevitable fact of economies

Maybe an inevitable fact of human behaviour.

> a result of changing government policies, globalization, and the loss of power of labor, engineers, and professionals.

I completely agree that these are the reasons why we've regressed.

There is a tendency for capital to be more valuable than the results of labour, which should theoretically be offset by diminished returns on capital. However the theoretical natural state of economies is disrupted by the fact that those with means will change the laws and tilt things in their favour. It's this fact (which we could accurately call corruption, which we've institutionalized as 'lobbying') that makes inequality inevitable.

> Maybe an inevitable fact of human behavior.

In brief I disagree. More the product of determined coalitions and misinformation. Things we can change, regardless.

> There is a tendency for capital to be more valuable than the results of labour,

Ironically I think capital is far less valuable than labor at the moment, partly because valuable labor is far scarcer. I suspect capital's value is being artificially propped up, but I'm not sure of the cause.

> ...those with means will change the laws.. The citizens of any republic must remain vigilant, but more people need to realize that getting a bigger slice isn't worth it when you're shrinking the pie.

Would you give up every technology invented since 1970 (no cell phone or computer, no MRI, no chemotherapy) if it meant you could buy a tiny house with no amenities for cheap out in the boondocks, and get a job with no degree?

(Note that with population growth, the boondocks have inevitably moved further out.)

> Would you give up every technology invented since 1970 (no cell phone or computer, no MRI, no chemotherapy) if it meant you could buy a tiny house with no amenities for cheap out in the boondocks, and get a job with no degree?

Most of my ancestors had none of these. Most also lived relatively stress free lives, owned property, didn't work particularly long hours, and most lived into their 90's.

For most of my 'career', I've worked 60-80 hour weeks. Been stressed out as hell. Own no property. My wife and I's 'dream' involves retiring to a stress free place and yes, doesn't really involve technology. Even that is looking like a pipe dream. Recent studies state that retirement may not be possible for millenials, period. Most of my ancestors were able to stop working in their 60's, and still maintain their quality of life (which, as I stated before, lasted into their 90's).

Technological progress is not dependant on inequality. America and Europe were at one point more egalitarian. And society saw its fastest technological progress ever. Heck, most technology today is still built on the exact same foundations that were developed in the 1950s to 1970s.

The problem of inequality isn't necessarily a market-based economy. But rather the current set of laws that enable incumbents to make higher returns on capital than the rest of society. The problem really is - how do we properly allocate resources while also distributing wealth in a way that is most beneficial to all.

It's not a problem of capitalism vs. socialism vs. communism, or technological progress vs. no progress.

I'm disputing this: refuse to accept that millenials are 'worse off', citing technology advances or whatever.

I was disputing the idea that we are worse off than some past period, not that we are worse than some hypothetical alternate reality where every single thing is better. So again, are you willing to give up technology and live in that past? Is your wife willing to accept a 1/1,000 risk of maternal mortality rather than a 2 or 3/100,000 risk?

Also, I have no idea why you are bringing up inequality. None of the things mentioned in mcphage's comment have anything to do with inequality. Neither does your 60-80 hour weeks, your stress, or changing demographic ratios which will make retirement (at future higher standards of living) more difficult.

I brought it up because equating technology to living standards is a common strawman to convince people that inequality is worth having, because technology improves our lives.

They say that because the average 'poor' person has access to things rich people didn't have access to 100 years ago, that the poor person should accept that they're rich, and not complain.

I'm calling it what it is, a strawman. One that occurs in every discussion of inequality. One that's existed since time immemorial, when slaveowners claimed that their slaves were better off on the plantations than in primitive Africa.

As for why I brought up points that weren't in the parent post, I was agreeing, and then elaborating on the subject because it's an interesting subject.

And of course, inequality is completely relevant in a discussion about millenials relative wealth vs. previous generations.

Wait, so in fact millennials are not 'worse off'? In fact, they are better off, just not quite as much as other people that they happen to be jealous of?

That was the only point I was making. Glad we are in agreement.

Millenials (on average) will have less job security, have to wait longer to own a home, have to work longer hours in general, have less vacation and less leisure time, have a shorter retirement (or no retirement), will have less economic freedom and less personal freedom.

But more technology.

It's up to you whether or not you think that's better.

Here in Germany we have pp who retired in their 50s. Like 55 or so. Today they collect fine wines from all over the world and tell young pp "to work harder"(i know some of them)....no comment.

In December 1975 the Case-Shiller US National Home Price Index was at 26.45. In December 2015 it was at 175.65. Case-Shiller prices are nominal. So nominally, home prices have risen 564% in 40 years. (http://us.spindices.com/indices/real-estate/sp-case-shiller-...)

In 1974, median real household income for those aged 25-34 was about $54,000 per year. In 2014, it was roughly the same. (http://www.advisorperspectives.com/dshort/updates/Household-...)

Using a BLS inflation calculator, we can calculate the 1974 nominal median income for those aged 25-34 as $11,245. (http://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm)

As a sanity check, I checked the Census for the median household income in 1974 and it was $12,840, which makes sense. (http://www2.census.gov/prod2/popscan/p60-101.pdf)

So in 1975, the Case-Shiller index to young household median nominal income ratio was 0.00235. In 2015, it was 0.00325. This means that in 40 years, the amount of money young households must pay for buying a house has risen by 38%.

Does this index account for the increase in home size since 1975? Homes are nearly twice as large now.

It does not adjust for square footage, so yes that's a good point.

The 30-year mortgage interest rate in 1975 was 8+%. These days it's less than 4%.

The value of the house has increased significantly, but has the value of the monthly payment?

For first time buyers the down payment is a bigger hurdle than the monthly payment. Higher purchase prices make this hurdle even higher, even if monthly payments as a proportion of income are the same, as I suspect they are.

> I don't see how the conclusion would be anything else, with merely a moment's thought.

Well it depends what side you are on! :)

Anecdotally, in the UK many older people will claim (A) Young people spend frivolously (B) Young people don't work hard enough or "as hard as they did" and/or (C) Their success was "their success".

Everything about economies, markets, education, housing, expectations, opportunities and the rest is wishy-washed away with "Well if they worked harder (like I did), those would work out for them".

>Anecdotally, in the UK many older people will claim (A) Young people spend frivolously (B) Young people don't work hard enough or "as hard as they did" and/or (C) Their success was "their success".

People who claim millenials don't work hard and that they spend frivolously are probably right. The issue, of course, is that it's not an exclusive truth: Millenials are worse off than the generation previous AND they work less hard.

The same problem exists in millenials, obviously. They think the world is out to get them, and they are right. But they also don't work hard enough.

In short, everyone contributes to this downwards spiral.

Except the data doesn't agree with you. According to most studies millenials work as hard or harder than previous generations, mostly because they don't have a choice

Can you cite some of these studies? I am interested in how they quantify work (and just seeing the conclusions they come to and how they got there).

This is a specialized industrial economy. Telling people to "work harder" is the conceptual equivalent to telling them to shut off the tractors and plow the field by hand.

Gen X and Millenials do not work as hard as Boomers. They work much, much smarter. Worker productivity is higher than it has ever been.

Boomers look at younger generations and see "Ah, look at this! All they do is press a button, and the machine does all the work, yet still they complain." The Boomers conveniently ignore the part where the button was programmed by Gen X and Millennial engineers, and the only reason there is even anyone around to push the button is because no one will ever get paid a living wage for not pushing a button, as long as "work hard" Boomers are in power.

But as political control lags behind workforce composition, the people who grew up believing that success is the result of hard work are now commanding the economy. And they are responsible for the creation of the "bullshit job", wherein unnecessary work is invented out of thin air, just so that workers will continue to have the opportunity to show how hard they can work.

Millennials do not slack off at these jobs because they are bad workers. They do it because they are smart enough to know that the work is meaningless, and it does not matter one whit whether it is done poorly, or not at all. The only reason they work at all is because they need money to survive.

We no longer need all hands on deck. It's time to stop feeling guilty or judgmental about enjoying leisure time before age 65. And it's time to distribute the productivity dividend to the people who have been doing the work all these years. It simply does not matter that Millennials do not work hard. We have so many machines now that none of them really need to. So if any of them do work harder, that just means less actual work is available to others of their generation, or worse for them, to Gen X workers (who have been somewhat less harshly shut out from economic prosperity, but shut out all the same).

Boomers will be in for a rude awakening when they are all sitting in their retirement party castles and no young employees are ever around to serve them their Mai-Tais promptly at 5 o'clock. The younger generations will be trading what little they have with each other until the old people die off and release their stranglehold on the economy.

>Gen X and Millenials do not work as hard as Boomers. They work much, much smarter. Worker productivity is higher than it has ever been.

And yet, this is not enough. Our generation (I am in my early 30s / late 20s) will have lower access to resources than the previous one. And that's just something we have to accept rather than bitch about - sure, some hand-wringing is fine, but at the end of the day it does nothing for us.

We must use the higher productivity we have and STILL put in more work than the previous generation if we are to overcome the economic quandry facing us.

Or we can pass basic income and solve a lot of the problems in one fell swoop. But that requires old people to vote against their immediate self-interest and the government to coordinate enough to roll out the biggest wealth redistribution since WW2. This doesn't strike me as very likely. So time to get to work, as much as it sucks.

When my evil bit gets randomly flipped by a cosmic ray every now and then, I think about questionably ethical ways for young folks to financially exploit older folks.

For all my malicious cogitation, I just can't come up with anything more promising than a cyber-cold war. Essentially, it's the same con Boomer pulled on Greatest. You drum up a lot of fear in the older folks, and get them to spend a lot of money defending against the bogeyman, which is invariably spent on jobs for younger folks. A lot of money changes hands, and no one has to go out and actually risk getting killed.

Except the trick this time is you don't have an identifiable state enemy. The bogeyman is "hackers" and "terrorists", who will crack your Facebook and somehow steal all the money in your IRA by turning it into Blitcoins, a digital form of heroin that uses encryption to kidnap your grandchildren. The only way to stop it is a "cyber-corps" staffed by patriotic defenders of digital freedom, who will pre-emptively crack your Facebook to ensure that the money in your IRA is rightly going to cyber-taxes, rather than getting stolen by hacker terrorists or terrorist hackers. Cyber-stolen by cyber-criminals. From the cyber-cloud. Cybercybercybercyber.

We explicitly partner with China and Russia, to show that the cyber-situation is so bad that we have to cooperate with the filthy Commies to fight it. And they could probably also stand to siphon some cash from their old guard to the newer digital barons. We run a few media-frenzied false flag operations to demonstrate that critical infrastructure is even more vulnerable to cyber-attack than to decades of chronic neglect and mis-maintenance. Eventually, young folks get at the voting machines to "secure them against tampering". Or should I say foreign tampering? It's really just too bad the USSR fell apart before Gen X could take over the con.

If we have to work in bullshit jobs to get by, there's no particular reason why Boomers should be the only ones inventing the bullshit.

A distant second place is jacking up the cost of geriatric health care, then swabbing retirement home toilet seats with resistant strains of chlamydia. Those "free love" bastards would finally learn what it was like growing up in the 80s, when kids were taught that their genitals were ticking time bombs that could kill not only you, but also everyone you ever loved (in the literal sense).

I'd consider internet access a vital service at this point, given the sheer number of entry-level jobs that now only take applications online.

Not necessarily home internet access. There are many places that offer free wifi, and AFAIK most public libraries in the US offer computer access to members.

> places that offer free wifi

With the expectation that you'll be buying things (and the implied threat of making you leave if you don't). Not suitable for job seeking.

> most public libraries in the US offer computer access to members

For a half hour or an hour at a time, yes. Not suitable for job seeking.

> For a half hour or an hour at a time, yes. Not suitable for job seeking.

I think that most people here would reject the notion that 30m-1h of computer time per day isn't a meaningful amount. If you've written your resume beforehand, you can easily transcribe it to the computer and upload it to a free Google Drive account in under 30m without being a fast typist. Most online job applications take <30m (source: gf who recently went on a job search). Getting one or two of those a day would be an excellent start with not that much effort invested. Alternatively, using that time to browse job aggregators could get you a lot of leads to follow up with in-person or over the phone.

Furthermore, perhaps I live in a bubble but every public library I've been to in the last 5 years has also offered free wifi.

I'm not saying this is a panacea, there are plenty of people without reliable access to their transportation or time to visit their local library, or can't leave the house for numerous other reasons. Just something to consider when making the widespread claim that everyone needs a home internet bill.

I'd add to this that millennials are getting married later than any previous generation, and marriage allows one to share resources with a partner and therefore reduce expenses.

And we're getting married later because 'adulthood' starts later. It used to be the case that you could support a family with a job you get at 18.

If you did go to university, it was easy to pay for and generally not too hard to graduate in 4 years. A bachelor's degree was valuable. Today, good luck graduating in 4 years. Not to mention, a bachelor's degree is worth far less, graduate degrees or dual degrees are the thing now.

By the time you go through university (5-8 years), work your (probably unpaid) internship, and get a job that gives you so much as a hope of a decent, middle class life, you're probably 25-28 years old. And unless you found your future spouse in university, then there's at least a year of dating, a year or two of engagement (since wedding venues are damn near impossible to find), and you're getting married at 30+.

Anyhow of course that's above the average, plenty get married young, but then again, plenty are poor too. Poor people can get married younger by skipping the whole university thing, but then that does diminish their income potential for their lives. This is what I did, then went to university. Now I'm still 30+, albeit married, but no kids yet.

Anyhow, the point is, marriage generally comes as a result of financial stability, not the other way around, though you're right that it does reduce expenses, if both spouses work. But because of cultural constructs, stability needs to exist before people couple up.

If degrees are worth far less, yet cost far more than in the past - why do people pursue them as if they are mandatory? Intertia? Stigmatization of not having a degree by society/government? I ask in all seriousness, as a large percentage of the most successful (and therefore best compensated) people I work with in tech don't have degrees.

> If degrees are worth far less, yet cost far more than in the past - why do people pursue them as if they are mandatory?

A degree is the new high school diploma. It's game theory really. If no one has a degree, it's super valuable, so whoever gets one will have a huge advantage. So everyone gets one because it's the best individual decision. Today, since everyone has one, if you're one of the few that don't, you're at a massive disadvantage. So you still get one for fear of being left behind, even if the relative worth is far less.

Tech (rather programming) is kind of an exception because it's easier to show what you're capable of, which allows you to bypass the requirement. There are plenty of trades and 'artistic' fields which allow for this as well. But for most fields, a degree is a sort of 'guarantee' of a minimum level of knowledge, dedication and even financial means. There's no Github for business people.

> There's no Github for business people.

Is that the sound of opportunity knocking?

Because in a tight job market (which is what we have) they are mandatory. If you have 500 candidates and 250 don't have degrees you can eliminate half the applicants pretty easy. And you don't want to be in the easy-to-eliminate half.

The question isn't who you work with now, it's what your HR department puts on new job postings. Do they say degree required?

Tech is unusual in this regard. Most of the jobs that don't require a degree are either terrible or require luck/connections to get into. Skilled trades are often put forward as an exception, but the people I've known in those sorts of positions usually were able to get into them because of some sort of connection: family, etc. If they were easier to get into their wages would drop.

Because most people don't know any better. Millennials have literally spent their entire life time being told that a college degree is the only way to succeed in life. No one mentions what to major in or where to do it at. So they get bad degrees, go into overwhelming debt, and then can't find a job on top of all that. I know that a $50K college degree in UnderWaterBasketWeaving is probably a waste of money but at 18 I sure as hell didn't. And the worst part is that parents buy into and propagate the narrative too, because they don't know any better either. They grew up in a time in which a degree was actually a golden ticket to the middle class.

And then there is the fact that in a lot of cases it is mandatory. My mom has been a secretary most of her adult life. Then she became a parelegal because of her overwhelming experience. It has become increasingly hard for her to change jobs as a Middle aged woman because most firms won't even look at someone without a bachelor job for a secretary position. Much less the better paying parelegal job she's become accustomed to. A 20 year old kid just trying to get that entry level position now has to compete not only with people like my mom with more years experience than he's been alive, but also with degree holding individuals.

It's the social signal a degree sends that people are paying for. That's the sad truth here.

You don't go to stanford over a local liberal arts school because you'll get a massively superior education at Stanford - you go to Stanford so you can get to know other Stanford students who are more likely to be wealthy and connected.

My dad went to stardford in the 70's, and he said when LaTex didn't have the physics symbol hbar, he just went over to Don Knuth's office and said hey dude, put an Hbar into this thing so physicists can use it.

You won't get that kind of access as a local liberal arts or community college, and that kind of social access is worth far more than stuff you can learn for free on the internet.

This line of thinking was radical heresy pre-2009/occupy wall street.

If older millenials made the argument to any parent/teacher/elder that college was an expensive boondoggle, the response would be something along the lines of "you will wind up dead or in jail".

And if one had a strong enough self-confidence to not buy the prophesies of manacled destitution, there was the social side of the con to catch them.

The social and hedonistic enticements. That longed for bacchanal known as the college experience, was always higher eds backup plan to lure younglings like the pied piper of hamelin into insurmountable debt.

That's why they spend so much turning colleges into country clubs for the youth. There is no legitimate reason pure education needs to cost so much.

Like the elves, dwarves and humans of middle earth, so we were, all of us, deceived.

All that said. I loved college, it just did nothing for me economically. After I graduated and it was 2009, I would have rather had all the tuition money as seed cash for bootstrapping a career.

Why does college take so long? I didn't do anything special and got out in 4.

Well, in Canada, 'college' means a 2 year technical diploma, and is basically worthless unless you are studying to be a mechanic or a secretary.

3 year university degrees exist, but only in general studies or a few very soft subjects.

The 'typical' degree which is called a 4-year degree, means you need to take the maximum course load every semester for 4 years. With scheduling, workloads, internships, etc..., it's very rare for anyone to complete it in 4 years in most fields (engineering, business, most sciences, etc...) these days. It's possible, but the vast majority take longer. If you change majors even once, good luck.

Anyhow, not sure exactly how the system works in the US. Maybe the system is efficient enough that graduating in 4 years is still a possibility? Maybe less people work because the cost is so high, whereas in Canada more students have jobs?

In the US, 4 years is what you shoot for for a BA or BS. If you really wear yourself out and overload, you might be able to do it in three, three and a half, but scheduling usually doesn't allow that - between pre-requisites, course limits, course availability, etc. If you've got any kind of hiccup along the way, like failing a class, not getting into courses you need, switching majors, taking a non-off term internship, health issues, etc, you're looking at five years.

With the catastrophic cost of a university education, people really have no choice but to take on debt to get a degree - even if you were working full-time, year-round, the wages you'd get as a high school graduate in some shit job don't even cover state-school tuition, let alone a private college, not to mention books, food, a place to live, etc. My dad made about $5k working over the summer in the 70s when he was in college, and I also made about $5k working when I could when I was in college in the 2000s. The difference is, that paid his whole year of school and living expenses, rather than half of one semester of tuition.

In the US:

* Changing majors

* Transferring from a community college to a university

* Failing or withdrawing from courses, especially ones not offered every semester

* Trying to balance coursework with a work schedule or childcare

Can all delay you a year or two, perhaps more in combination. I observed a complete paradigm shift between:

* The students who went straight from high school and into college; Lived in dorms, high representation in humanities programs, who were showing up to the 13th/14th grade with no real responsibilities and enough money to do as they like & find a thing they were interested in. They had a wide variety of grades (many failed, some did very well), but usually a relaxed attitude about risks and leisure time.

* The commuters, "nontraditional" students, & community college students/transfers, for whom many of the above were frequently true, and who were usually career-oriented. They tended to struggle for the B grade.

* The STEM upperclassmen & grad students, who had successfully defeated or overcome these hazards by becoming workaholics who dropped everything else in their life to finish in 4 years with high marks & internships. They rarely retained any social life, and were often academia-oriented.

I think this betrays the severity of the issue there. There are plenty of people making ad-hoc roommate arrangements to deal with sharing resources/reducing expenses, but instead of pairs it's threes or more. It's not like being a two-person arrangement reduces expenses by such a magical amount that now the old model of finances works. The amount of people I am seeing being a married couple with a live-in tenant is pretty high, and they are still renting.

I feel strongly that it is generally even more risky nowadays to be in a two-person fixed relationship before you have achieved some sort of stability. A single person can couch surf/live in their car/effectively be homeless and still get back on their feet. It has taken me til 30 to feel like I had gotten to a place where if my partner took a fall at work I could cover both parties modest expenses among student loans and other debt, even though I am not holding any extraneousness debt aside from student loans.

A pooled income of two working and healthy people is still insufficient to mitigate enough risk before they can weather multiple setbacks and still pay student loans and start to form a family. What is the median income? $53,891 (http://money.cnn.com/2014/08/20/news/economy/median-income/)? Even ballpark estimates makes me feel just as safe trying to make do with half that than with that.

It's important to note that the number you mention for median income for _households_ which is pretty inaccurate especially for what you describe.

People sharing the same living space are counted as in the same household and more people tend to live in the same household when things go bad.

Much lower is personal income.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_...

Do you have any idea how much a marriage costs?

Not to be too witty, but mine cost approximately fifty dollars, which amounted to the costs of the permit ($20) and time with the justice of the peace ($30).

Until the kids come along and you live in a country where the cost of childcare/healthcare is rapidly rising, and many have no form of paid parental leave, paid sick leave, paid vacation, and/or work for companies that demand a rigid schedule.

>I'd add to this that millennials are getting married later than any previous generation

People deep in debt don't usually attract a lot of mates.

> I don't see how the conclusion would be anything else

But for many (especially Boomers) the conclusion is something else, because that's what they want it to be. So it's very worthwhile hammering the point home with exhaustive data.

Though publishing to Vice is preaching to the choir, of course...

What you say is true. However, I think a lot of millenials draw incorrect conclusions like assuming this is "unfair!" Perhaps things are just back to normal now? Who's to say what college and housing should cost? Who's to say how much jobs should pay? I always preach about self empowerment. Too many millenials whine, cry, point their fingers, share memes on facebook, get angry, and blame the world around them for how "unfair" the times are. I'm within the millenial age bracket. But I focus on the things I can control, like how much I spend. How much I save. How hard I work. And never ever ever does it creep into my mind that things are unfair. I never blame the rest of the world for my own hardships. Keep focusing on what you need to do, meaning the things you can actually control in your life, and your standard of living will improve. Not over night. We still live in a great country where anybody, in any circumstances, can overcome any struggle at all with enough hard work and persistence. This is the message we should be sending to millenials, not victimizing them.

Yeah, just take a good, long, hard pull on those bootstraps and everything will be fine. Social change has to happen sometimes, and sometimes there is a reason to be outraged.

Well, the USA GDP per capita (in constant dollars):

in 1971 was 21,183 dollars.

in 2014 was 46,405 dollars.

Obviously, millennials have to be richer than their fathers or, at least, than their grandparents.

source: https://www.google.es/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&m...

> Obviously, millennials have to be richer than their fathers or, at least, than their grandparents.

Only if the GDP per capita is allocated uniformly. Who makes more, a 25 year old working at Starbucks or a 55 year old white collar worker?

Sure, but if you take all the workers in consideration, things don't look so good neither.

"For most U.S. workers, real wages — that is, after inflation is taken into account — have been flat or even falling for decades, regardless of whether the economy has been adding or subtracting jobs."

from: http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/10/09/for-most-wor...

...and one of the major complaints about things is that GDP growth has entirely decoupled from wage growth meaning that Top X% intervals each reap more most of the GDP gains. Not to mention that when most think of a "middle class job" they think of getting paid $60k to $120K which (outside of being decidedly upper middle class) means that there must be a huge chunk getting below $46k.

GDP per capita is only the average right ? Because nowadays with the income inequality, I would consider looking at medians to be more accurate. And millennials are not the only generation currently alive so even a median would not help here.

Millennials are indeed richer than their grandparents, which is the comparison you're making here. But not their parents.

But GDP per capita is not a good statistic to be making this argument with, mostly because it is a mean rather than a median. Since 1971, much of those gains have gone to the the top 1%, and essentially all of those gains have gone to the top 20%.

"But GDP per capita is not a good statistic to be making this argument with, mostly because it is a mean rather than a median. Since 1971, much of those gains have gone to the the top 1%, and essentially all of those gains have gone to the top 20%."

That was also my point and GDP is the perfect statistic in my opinion.

GDP is not personal income or wealth, so I'm not sure what your point is.

But GDP would be a good measure of how rich a society is.

It's contextually worthless.

(1) College is mandatory for a lot more jobs, and college costs a lot more than it used to.

When I was young (1980s) all jobs that paid a good salary required college. I found (1990s+) especially in tech that this wasn't true anymore. I can easily earn around 6 figures working almost anywhere in tech and I never got a degree.

(3) Jobs are harder to come by, and pay worse.

I find the opposite of this as well. Getting a job for me 20 years ago meant going door to door, submitting resumes, filing out applications or using a recruiter. 10 years ago the dot-com bubble burst and there were no jobs. Today I've been happily employed at a job and 6 months later I get several job offers every single day. Especially in Tech there are more jobs than there are qualified people to fill them according to my recruiter.

Also my last job search was a couple hours spent online and then the phone calls and emails never seem to stop pouring in. Jobless claims soared in 2008 and now they are at 1970s levels.

http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united-states/jobless-claims

Do you think that your experience is representative?

This is conventional wisdom, but I don't think it holds as much muster as you think. Point #4 is a red herring as they add considerable wealth and convenience to the lives of the people that consume the services listed. Point 1 is a consequence of point 3 which is a result of the outsourcing/automation of labor. Well that's not coming back, because automation isn't going anywhere. We have to be a service-sector economy for the next few decades (until that starts to get automated too).

People have bought into College, because that seems like the path of least resistance to cushy white-collar service-sector jobs. This is more or less true, though I have met more hiring managers than less that care way more about acquired skill than degrees. Whatever, I'll grant #1 even though I think it doesn't have to be that way.

#2 is the one point on your list that is the most salient and controllable issue pertinent to the generation wealth gap. Land is a fixed resource, but housing doesn't have to be, but baby boomers show up to local elections and vote their interests to artificially tie their ownership of land to housing. Our parents paid waaaay less for housing than we do, and yet we put up with elected officials who maintain the status quo of strict zoning policy that results in over-priced, artificially scarce housing stock. Who can blame them? They leveraged themselves into a stupid investment, and the only reason that it pays off is because they vote for it to continue to pay.

I could probably afford a house in a mid-sized American city, but I refuse to purchase one. I refuse to reward the stupidity of the housing market with my dollars. I'd rather a greedy real estate developer have my money and lobby for the local government for density than award some dumb homeowner.

> (3) Jobs are harder to come by, and pay worse.

Not unlike those of us that graduated right before the Dot Com Crash. Economies like this are not new.

You kind of hint at this with points 2 & 3, but I think you could add:

(5) There are way more people than there used to be

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