Stagnating wages, rapidly increasing house prices, bad terms for renters, increasing university costs.
If I were 20 I'd consider working remote and just go live in a much cheaper country. You could get a boomer lifestyle yet!
If I were 20 I'd consider working remote and just go live in a much cheaper country. You could get a boomer lifestyle yet!
Perhaps that says more about me though?
Granted, I've deliberately eschewed larger cities, and as a consequence I've had a harder time convincing people that just because my degree was in math I can still be a competent developer.
Not trying to refute your point but rather to suggest that there are other ways to get n the door aside from leaning on your degree.
I guess I didn't articulate myself well- I think we're in accord here.
The degree seemed to hamper me-at best not help-in getting a CRUD gig in smaller cities.
I'm 'coming around'- started looking into work in Kansas City or St. Louis. Those are probably as large a city as I can handle.
For remote work, you're only a junior dev if you tell them you're a junior dev.
If you can show potential employers a profile of existing work and can convince them that you will bring worth to their company then you can find work.
Point of fact is that if you were to give the choice between today's 20-year-old lifestyle and the same in 1970, you'd be insane to choose 1970, especially if you were a minority or a woman. Sure, houses are cheaper in `70, but the jobs are much more menial, life is less comfortable, medicine is less advanced (particularly pain medication), social opportunities are much more stratified, entertainment is much harder to get, communication is considerably more limited, shopping times are much more limited, so on and so forth. Summing up the differences between now and then as merely "houses and uni costs" is basically just propaganda.
Working class wages were proportionately higher in 1970. Drawing a dividing line is hard, but somewhere between 1970 and 1980, wage gains became decoupled from productivity increases.
Medicine quite simply hasn't advanced significantly since 1970. Access to medicine by the underserved has, and accounts for much of increases in outcomes, as well as reduced environmental polutants and healthier lifestyles: clean air, clean water, unleaded petrol, lead-free paint, reduced smoking, and reduced alcohol consumption.
"Lifestyle" shopping was only just being invented at about this time -- shopping as recreation largley didn't exist. "Amazon" was called "Sears, Roebuck", you could buy a house, or a bed, or a wardrobe, with a 100% satisfaction guarantee.
Communications and entertainment are about the only area with significant improement, though I'd argue the quality of news coverage 1970 - 1980 was far higher than today -- most cities had multiple local papers with detailed coverage, and newsmagazines weren't the joke they are today. Television was more limited and video didn't exist, but movie theaters were much more common (and cheaper), and live performances easier to find. There was also a form of entertainment and information called "books", freely available in these terminal service devices called "libraries".
You've failed to account for decreased labour union participation (stronger job security), general life and housing security, highly subsidised educational opportunities, the burgeoning of opportunities resulting from the 1950s and 1960s Civil Rights movement, the long boom in opportunity in California (offsetting the decline of the rust belt), affordable air conditioning making life in the southeast comfortable for the first time, and the fact that in 1970, the advances of the next 30 years were rapidly approaching. I (and others) see the information revolution as largely played out -- its peak period seemed to be ~1995 - 2005.
Sources: varied, though Robert Gordon's The Rise and Fall of American Growth covers much of the changes in lifestyle, transport, health, communications, and work, from 1870 - 2015. It's especially damning on info/comms technologies excepting 1995-2005, and healthcare since 1970. Thomas Piketty's Capital in the 21st Century is one of many books addressing the rise in inequality, see also Anthony Atkinson's Inequality.
This is not true. Here are just 3 examples:
1. Childhood cancer - Less than 50% 5 year survival in 1970 vs greater than 80% 5 year survival now. http://www.cancer.gov/types/childhood-cancers/child-adolesce...
2. Anything dealing with the brain including diagnosis and treatment. Before CT and MRI - neurologists and neurosurgeons where operating blind. CT and MRI combined with computer technology allow the surgeon to plan and execute a much safer and gentler approach. In addition, during this time, our knowledge of practical neuro-anatomy has increased and enabled much better surgical approaches.
3. Low birthweight/premature infant mortality - We are much better at saving low birthweight / premature infants. See http://www.hrsa.gov/healthit/images/mchb_infantmortality_pub...
I would call these significant medical advances.
If you are talking about public health advances as opposed to medical advances, then actually good nutrition, good sanitation, and elimination of environmental toxins is probably responsible for almost the entire improvement in life expectancy. However, this has been truethroughout history and is not something new since the 1970's.
One of the NYTime health reporters had a statistc in a 1990s book that 85% of human L.E. improvements were from public health, not diect medical, meaasures. Laurie Garret IIRC.
https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/12627.Laurie_Garrett
"In all, 86 per cent of the increased life expectancy was due to decreases in infectious diseases. And the bulk of the decline in infectious disease deaths occurred prior to the age of antibiotics. Less than 4 per cent of the total improvement in life expectancy since 1700s can be credited to twentieth-century advances in medical care.”
― Laurie Garrett, Betrayal of Trust: The Collapse of Global Public Health
Intensive methods have worked in some areas. Sanitation, clean water, waste disposal, nutrition, vaccinations, hazard and toxin removal, and general preventive care -- all the nonsexy stuff, matter far more.
And, frankly, saying the internet and mass interpersonal communication was 'played out' as of 2005 is utter horseshit. Besides, how seriously should we take a source which damns radio, television, the film cinema, the telephone, and the internet, over 150 years when humanity had none of these beforehand? Should we go back to pre-1870 times, when being illiterate was commonplace instead of being notably unusual? I'm not sure how info/comms was somehow better then. Picking out 1995-2005 as being 'the only good decade for comms' is ludicrous.
It's also possible for inequality to increase, yet have the lower bound also increase. Yes, income disparity has increased, but life quality is not measured only in dollars. Try being gay in the '70s for a clear example. And it's not like homeless people are a new thing this century - they were around back then as well.
They are, by the way, books. Of whose existence I'm somewhat aware, and which was a point of my earlier comment.
I'd suggest you read some.
Your other point is they if A gets better it is ok if B gets worse.
I think lack of affordability of essentials like somewhere to live is of grave concern. Unaffordable housing causes homelessness. It means people have to start families later and have less time to raise their children.
As for starting families later, that happens with wealthy, stable societies. People were starting to have children later well before housing costs j-curved. Family sizes have reduced as well - plenty of western democracies are now below replacement birthrate.
In short, the problem is this: housing costs are a problem. Bitching about the boomers is going to help no-one, especially the millenials. Rather than spend that energy creating division, find forward-thinking solutions. Instead of being bitter about the one problem that generation has, be happy that things like job quality has improved[1] (yes, for the slightly lower amount of jobs per worker these days), education is more available[2], society is less discriminatory, food supply is of better quality, entertainment is more easily accessed, travel is much easier, so on and so forth.
Hence why I say that focusing only on house + uni price is just propaganda.
[1] Those jobs that immigrants do in modern western societies, the ones that the natives don't do because they're too menial? Those were the jobs that the young boomers and earlier had to do.
[2] Uni courses are more expensive, but there's a ton of education out there that isn't in the form of a four-year degree, and that's independent of the amazing resources available on the internet.