Millennials Are Screwed
highline.huffingtonpost.com
highline.huffingtonpost.com
What I'd love to be able to do is find a way to break out of the traditional debate about this topic: One person (usually a millennial) brings up the issues the article raises, then another person (usually not, often a boomer) counterpoints with the "participation trophy" or "what about motivation" or "the Internet" responses.
But in many of these cases, both exist at once: Millennials feel entitled because they were told to be by parents who told them they were entitled, either explicitly or through teaching, because those parents grew up in a world that made those entitlements possible. As the article points out, the system is complicated. It's so complicated that both sides are right, but neither is fully comprehending the consequences.
I think the question therefore must be not "how did we get to this place and who is to blame?" but rather "what societal changes are necessary to fix it?" Presuming enough of each generation want to fix the problem, by asking the latter question rather than the former, it may be possible to effect the kind of change that will prevent the genuine collapse we seem to be racing towards.
I can only hope that some of this translates into some kind of New Deal work. Being just older than the millennials, I have felt for some time that I grabbed the last rung of a ladder being dangled from a helicopter as the building under me was crumbling into flames.
Let's imagine that I'm a government that reserves the right to be sole issuer of my country's currency (though for political reasons I've delegated that power to a government-sponsored enterprise whose leadership I appoint). Now let's say I also issue securities denominated in that money. From my perspective, what's the difference between money and claims on money? From a holder's perspective, what's the difference between them? Even the obvious difference, one has yield and one does not, is pretty misleading, since the interbank rate tracks the securities rate.
I think it comes down to healthcare. We're good at keeping people alive now. Really good. Cancer mortality has dropped 50% in the last 10 years. I'm sure there are similar statistics for other common causes of death.
We have older generations who should be dying off and getting replaced by younger ones. It's not happening. Anecdotally, my parents are in their late 60s and working just as much as they did in their 30s.
I see this at work; my office building is chuffed full of grey hairs. My coworker at 40 years old is at the same level I am (late 20s) and can't move up because the hierarchy is full of people who should be retiring. Just look at the US senate and congress, the average age is 61, the oldest in history. These guys are ancient!
In my city, we have a housing problem. If you drive around during work hours, the streets are packed with retirees going about their daily business. What the hell are these people doing living in a bustling suburb? Move out to the country for god's sake, why are you living next to a school? This city should be for families, it was built as a bedroom community.
And then a paragraph later...
> Generalizations... fall apart under scrutiny.
As a 24 year old millennial - this article painted with a very emotional and us-vs-them brush which detracted from it's core. These sorts of articles love to blame baby boomers for the problems of the world - and while that's not necessarily incorrect, it's a convenient way to avoid blaming human nature - something we all share. It makes me wonder if in 40 years, the "Cyborg Generation" or whatever will be talking about how those crusty old millennial ruined the world by not doing XYZ which we all know now we should've.
The article was not blaming baby boomers as such, but the generation always inherits another generations decisions, and will always continue to, that's just how life works.
I feel like your comment is not relevant to the articles core points, and derails discussion to the oft repeated, non-consequential points, the article has a number of interesting points about why millennials face a difficult future, and references reasons why - the emotional parts of it are normal for this style of article and what make it powerful.
Emotion to generate the further interest, references to keep it in some solid grounding - I would say that's a good combination to start the discussion personally.
Sure, if XYZ == "protecting freedom of speech." Not doing so might complete the collapse of the US political process, which precipitates a series of events causing the collapse of civilization.
http://78.media.tumblr.com/a7020c8d003c0ccb2168abc4b8b5c8e6/...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Revolution#Death_toll
They almost certainly will. But thanks to climate change, I doubt they'll be called the cyborg generation.
Maybe the vast majority don't graduate from college, but the majority enroll according to BLS, and have for some time:
https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2017/69-point-7-percent-of-2016...
One of the hallmarks of a bubble is that the conventional wisdom support it wholeheartedly. The early 2000s US housing market is a case in point.
I remember vividly discussions with prospective first-time home buyers at the time. I told them they were taking a big risk borrowing money to pay for something that could quickly decline in value. Let's just say the conversation didn't go much further than that.
Today I have similar discussions with parents of high school children. Debt is still the funding mechanism, but the asset is a 4-year college degree. As before, this is a guaranteed conversation-killer.
There are many causes for the challenges faced by millenials, but worship at the altar of 4-year degrees, and especially the appetite for debt financing, is one of the biggest.
The bubble wasn't so much in ownership rates but in prices.
I appreciate your link to college enrollment. I never realized it was so high. But at the same time it's been relatively high--at least, much higher than I believed--since long before there was a so-called bubble in college enrollment.
I appreciate your points but I feel like you're trying too hard to affirm the current narrative among millennials that eschew both home ownership and college. Whatever the merit of that argument, the premise that there's a recent bubble in the numbers of people pursing those things is belied by the evidence. The only concrete thing we can say in both cases relates to price inflation.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home-ownership_in_the_United_S...
[2] I couldn't find historical numbers on the percentage of first-time home buyers taking out a mortgage. I feel like this point is uncontroversial, but I could very well be wrong.
a) ridiculing the people who complained that ever since the great recession job statistics are made up [1]
b) publishes large and beautifully animated articles about how millenials face "never ending job insecurity", facing years of unemployment between jobs they lose for the slightest of mistakes (see post these comments are about)
I mean exactly one of these articles is not a complete lie. Unfortunately, both are published by the same news organisation ... (perhaps because we currently no longer have Obama's government ? [2])
Frankly, I got my first real job in July 2001. Yes, that 2001. As a tech consultant. It almost sounds like a joke. I had colleagues who made 10 TIMES my wage just because they were hired a year earlier, and I was far, far more capable than some of them. And let's not mention the company cars. Let's just not. Granted, they fired some of those, but still.
Tell me about unfairness.
[1] http://www.huffingtonpost.in/entry/trump-unemployment-jobs-n...
Well. My grandfather lost an eye in WWII so was a fitter for Czech pilots. They'd been kicked out of their country by a genocidal megalomaniac. When the war finished and they returned, a new megalomanic wouldn't let them leave again. Occasionally by using tanks.
My father grew up in Egypt where the only source of income was sand crabs and running errands for Italian PoWs. He got kicked out too eventually as he wasn't of the appropriate religion. The only country that would take him was the other side of the world.
Me? I've had it easy. The Cold War and the odd IRA bomb aside, I thought my life has been a bed of roses compared to my forefathers.
I've never had a company car. I had no idea I was so hard done by until now.
But I worked my way into some money. That's what the Millennials are missing I think, the plausible way forward. Never mind where they are starting from; can they make any progress at all? That's the issue.
I have been very lucky since.
I had to look up median to make sure I wasn't confusing it with the mean. This is almost unbelievable. I would have guessed 10x at most.
http://peoplespolicyproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/F...
This white paper goes a long way to explain why this occurred.
Many of these same problems bit Gen X, but at least the millennials are big enough to have articles written about their plight!
I'm 34, I graduated high school just in time to watch the economic prosperity I had viewed through the eyes of older friends and relatives immediately explode out from under me. I can remember when everything wasn't totally doomed forever, but I never got to experience it first hand.
Gen X did, and while it's not like they haven't suffered along with us since, it's not quite the same. You don't get our sympathy, but you don't get our anger either.
This comment is unlikely to protect anyone, but hopefully raises awareness that fast-blinking text has been known to induce seizures: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/epilepsy-site-hacked-with-seizu... Please be responsible.
[1] I helped launch Highline when I worked for HuffPost. I'm certainly proud of that fact, but I don't go out of my way to share its content.
If you can concretely point out what is false or sensationalist, that's a different story... obviously lies should not be tolerated.
https://www.brookings.edu/research/the-typical-household-wit...
"The average balance of outstanding student loan debt for households with some debt was $25,700. The median debt was $13,000, and seventy-five percent of borrowers had less than $29,000. These burdens are relatively modest given the annual earnings of these households. The average annual wage earnings among this population was $71,700."
There same example involved a man who couldn't get a job as a bank teller, but apparently had no trouble getting one making more money as a bus driver. (I guess the implication is that blue collar jobs are bad?)
Yes, there is one thing which Millennials can change. It is very easy and should take less than 1 hr (on average) per year. Go and VOTE in the elections.
The reason why policies favor Boomers is because Boomers go and vote. Politicians are scared to touch social security and medicare for anyone over 55 because those folks turn out and vote. There is simply no excuse for Millennials to have a huge turnout disparity when compared against Boomers[1].
[1] http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/05/16/millennials-...
> Becky is an 8-bit creation living in Brooklyn. You can find her Kickstarter here.
This links to a sign-up for an email newsletter.
Is this an inside joke? Is Becky the name of the artist or not?
Why do I have to ask questions like this about the credits for a piece of professional journalism?
Does the Huffington Post count as professional journalism though?
Yes, it does count as journalism.
* It is written by a Michael Hobbes, a contributing editor of Highline which is a new online magazine apparently owned by Huffpost
* It credits an additional reporter-- Gregory Barber, who appears to have written previously for the Washington Post-- plus two additional research assistants. (Ignoring for the moment the enormous team of designers who I guess put together the novel scrolling system.)
* I'm seeing fairly standard/reputable references for some of the stats-- The College Board for the stat about how much debt. students are taking on, some U.S. census references, Journal of Labor Economics out of the University of Chicago, etc.
* looks to be structured as a broad advocacy piece interspersed with "slice of life" stories about millenial's struggles to get jobs with decent wages and benefits to be able to support themselves
Guess what: despite a CS degree from a fairly prestigious school, I started out my career sucking shit on the help desk and fixing bugs in legacy code.
You need to suck shit at the start of your career, learn, and advance. This also means living in a shithole apartment and eating Ramen instead of blowing your cash at da club or on a new car. It’s been that way since the industrial revolution.
You are not special. You are not snowflakes. We cannot hold your hands. Work it out for yourselves, just like we did, and the boomers did before us.
> You need to suck shit at the start of your career, learn, and advance. It’s been that way since the industrial revolution.
For many - perhaps most - millennials, there simply are no opportunities for advancement. There is no reward. People like me, who are software engineers and do well for themselves, are the exception. The arguments in the article are economic, and grounded in economic data and realities. Ignoring those systemic problems because you're doing just fine is just willful ignorance.
> You are not special. You are not snowflakes. We cannot hold your hands. Work it out for yourselves, just like we did.
Nobody's saying anyone's "special." The whole point of the article is that no millennial is getting what previous generations got - nobody is asking for special treatment. The ask is for treatment equivalent to what their parents got, the same treatment that you received. We can't "work it out for ourselves" when we have no power, no money, massive debt, poor wages, no benefits, no retirement plan, and no way out. We can't "work it out" when your generation - and those before you - are draining and then destroying the social safety nets that you relied on to get where you are.
We don't deserve the privileges your generation had any more than you did. We deserve it exactly the same amount. Why do you blame us while you rescind them?
There is near-zero difference between what a millennial faces and what I faced in the last “great depression” coming out of school in the early 1990s, post the 1988 crash.
It took months or years to find a job, and you had to work your ass off when you found one to keep it. I had lots of debt.
Boom and bust cycles are normal. Millenials are not special in being screwed by the timing of their birth.
No, the premise is that millennials are normal people born into a society whose risk/reward/choice incentives are completely out of wack, and who face massive and untenable inequality created by the generations that came before them. If we are special, it's only because the actions of previous generations have made us so. Nobody is saying anywhere that we view ourselves as better or superior to other generations - almost the opposite; we're the same, yet, uniquely disadvantaged.
> Boom and bust cycles are normal. Millennials are not special in being screwed by the timing of their birth.
Except the most recent cycle (the 2007 recession) exacerbated these problems, and ten years later, for working-class millennials there's been no recovery whatsoever. The economy has recovered, the rich are getting richer, nobody at the bottom is doing any better than they were. Why's that?
> There is zero difference between what a millennial faces and what I faced in the last “great depression” coming out of school in the early 1990s, post the 1988 crash.
Again - did you read the article? There's a clear difference and they explain it quite well. It's not just about the ordinary economic cycle; it's about the way incentives have been perverted and restructuring of our economy and all its various parts have shifted all wealth to the wealthy and all burdens to those who are not. If you think this is just about some people being upset that 2007 happened, you're missing the bigger point: 2007 happened, but was happening before, and is still happening, and the problems are bigger than just "the markets aren't doing well this year."
What I'm trying to get across is that what you did was hard when you did it, and is now almost impossible. Why should it get harder? What's good about people suffering more, and longer, than you did? Why is the generation getting hurt the one to blame for being in trouble when we didn't create any of the problems or systems screwing us?
This is a data-driven, economic-realities based argument. Coming back with "well, toughen up and deal with it" is unhelpful - the way we're dealing with it is by pushing strongly for change.
Again, I don’t think you realize this is the way the world works and has always worked.
The young always bitch about being screwed over by their predecessors, bitch about income inequality, and wear T-shirts with the face of mass murderers like Che Guevara thinking they’re sticking it to “the man”.
Then they finally realize they actually have to find their own way, which might be very different from what their parents did. And life moves on.
1) Things are working how they always work.
2) If someone tells you that things are working differently, that can't be true, because things are working the way they always work.
3) Therefore, evidence that this is not in fact the same as how things always work should be ignored.
Can you please respond to the evidence I and the article are giving - massive and rising inequality, lack of wage growth, unprecedented encumbrance with debt, and restructuring of corporate interest and benefit systems - and explain how it's how things have always worked?
> Then they finally realize they actually have to find their own way, which might be very different from what their parents did. And life moves on.
Who is to say that "change the system so this doesn't keep happening" can't be the way millennials are finding?
I do not accept the article as fact.
Read the (very few, mostly on pull quote) references. They are cherry-picked stats, or from completely biased sources.
Almost everything else in the article is completely un-cited.
There are no dissenting viewpoints or statistics presented.
It has no merit as a journalistic or academic work.
Many are getting $125k+ salaries in the Bay and Seattle. Of course, not everyone will work for a Big N. Even still, getting a $70k+ offer in CS is very common for a mediocre dev coming from a mediocre college with a mediocre gpa
In some ways, I agree today's kids have it tougher. In other ways, there are opportunities that did not exist in the past.
I have hopes for today's recent grads in that things remind me somewhat of the mid 80s. (That's when I graduated college.) The economy was ready to boom for a good long time. Some jobs were going away, some were opening up. I was lucky enough to get a job in programming, the economy carried me forward to this day. I wish the same good luck to future generations.
A couple of forces might actually work to millenials' favor --
1) Boomers are retiring and dying off. Somebody will buy their homes.
Right now it seems investors are buying them all but as the demographic trend continues, the supply might outpace investor demand, the second-derivative will go negative, which will slow investor demand, and probably cause the first-derivative to go negative.
This trend will also affect other forms of investments as boomers cash out their portfolios.
2) Social movements such as #metoo will probably make certain types of people hiring liabilities (too "old-school"), and younger people might benefit.
OTOH, other forces might work against millenials --
1) Human obsolescence, especially if current social assumptions hold and keep programs such as basic income politically untenable.
From my perspective as a parent and employer of several millenials here in the Vancouver BC area, those that go into a skilled trade seem to do far better right now than those getting a desk or general labor job.
Pretty much it, work your own pension fund. That looks to be the only solution after "havings lots of kids" who will look after you
When I was younger... I had 4 roommates in Astoria.. This allowed me to save a lot of money. Why do people insist on living alone and then bitching about rent being high??
instead, enroll in a community college program for anything construction related...in Santa Rosa, home builders are naming their prices. the same will soon happen in Ventura. in the Bay Area, construction tradespeople turn down work due to demand. there is work to be done that will earn you a comfortable living that does not require a university degree.
Y'know, if it's too audacious, the reprisals are gonna be financially brutal once the pendulum swings back. Two can play at the game of literal and baldly-stated wealth redistribution, if that becomes the norm. But by then most of the current decision makers will be dead, so who cares?
As an Xer over 40, I'm definitely more sympathetic to Millenials than the Boomers.
My stereotyping: The Baby Boomers politically have bought off Democrats and Republicans to get the lowest top bracket tax rates seen since income taxes began, but they demand complete payout of Medicare and Social Security benefits without any haircuts, while also exploding the national debt, and supporting optional wars of aggression. This compared to the prior generation who taxed themselves like crazy while still building massive private and public infrastructure, balancing the budget, and having middle class wealth that was the envy of the world.
At best, Baby Boomers are coasters. At worst, Baby Boomers are a useless generation that has given us nothing terribly useful or innovative. Millenials early on grew up with the idea they could coast like the boomers, and then the 2008 financial crisis happened, and they had a rude awakening.
Why do I give more crap to Baby Boomers? Because they've had their chance and they pissed it away. They have left the country far worse off financially, and massively wealth disproportionate, compared to the country they were handed. Whereas the Millenials had been, up until about now, young and entitled to be a little stupid and irresponsible - but they did not make this bed at all.
Anyway, it's going to be up to Millenials and Xers to deal with it.
I see this in my own kids too. I warn them about wasting time on stupid crap, but they largely blow it off. At some point they will be out the door, on their own, and poor. Hopefully they make it on their own, because they aren't moving back in. They have had sufficient warning and preparation which they dutifully ignore.
If rent is half your pay check then either increase your income or move to a different location with a lower cost of living. I have known numerous people who have moved from California to Texas for exactly that reason and I have also met some people who have completely left the US for this reason.
As a software developer I see where entitlement creeps in at various places. Sometimes it is from young people who cry because they suddenly realize they are drowning just need a little life raft, which because a crutch for their next life raft. Sometimes it is from old people who are tired of keeping up and just want to retain their position in life. At the end of the day it all comes down to being competitive with your quality of output.
Here is a simple way to identify the behavior behind the problems many millennials face. Ask a simple question: "Should I feel sorry for you?" Clearly, the answer is yes, but that an affirmative answer challenges the cognitive complexity that allows a person to exist in that state in the first place. Again, don't care.
Initiative. People with initiative tend to be better off regardless of how bad anything else is.
> Should we not be holding our societies to a slightly higher standard than what passes in the third world?
You should hold yourself to whatever standard is most appropriate for you. Crying about how bad life is, or expecting sympathy, probably won't get you what you to where you want to be.
There is a world of difference between sympathy and empathy. One of those is a childish quality that results in nothing positive. The other allows you to improve yourself and the world around you. If you cannot tell the difference you are no position to suggest such opinions of others.
That's just a truism though. Your advice may as well be "read more books" or "work harder". These are not solutions to the wider problems facing our societies.
>You should hold yourself to whatever standard is most appropriate for you. Crying about how bad life is, or expecting sympathy, probably won't get you what you to where you want to be.
To be dissatisfied with our society and the inter-generational transfers of wealth is is to "cry" and to "expect sympathy"? You've build up a nifty little strawman there that allows you to be awfully condescending, and that's nice and all, but as with all strawmen, it's not grounded in reality.
>There is a world of difference between sympathy and empathy. One of those is a childish quality that results in nothing positive. The other allows you to improve yourself and the world around you. If you cannot tell the difference you are no position to suggest such opinions of others.
Sorry but what is your point? Self-improvement is great and something we should all aspire to, yes! But why then is improving our society off limits? We cannot improve something without first criticising it. I don't understand why you are so sensitive to people criticising where we are just because people in Africa are poorer. It does not make sense to me.
Actually, yes. Consider for a moment that there are many immigrants to the US who have no trouble finding high paying jobs. If they can make it here then why can't somebody who grew up here?
I really get the impression you are trying to blame society for the failure of young people who expect sympathy. To me that is the biggest strawman here. This might be a societal problem, but the solutions rest on individuals. Blaming things, such as society, is just another form of crying.
> Your advice may as well be "read more books" or "work harder".
Yes, that is a good start. It worked for me. Also, so did writing tons of open source software in my time outside the office and having two simultaneous careers in unrelated industries.
I've worked out an arrangement with my dad to pay back about half my loans interest free. The interest itself doesn't amount to much on the principal, but it's a significant chunk of money. However, because we refinanced those loans onto his home equity line, he can deduct that interest.
Currently I live at home and commute 1.5-2 hours into work. I don't expect to be doing this forever, it's a 1-2 year gig to knock my debt down by overpaying as much as possible.
It helps that I have a well paying job for my major/area, too.
All said and done, this is not ideal for me- I'd like to live on my own and shorten my commute. But my debt is not ideal either, so I'll take what I can to reduce that, even if it means living out of my childhood bedroom.
I have watched my much younger sisters-in-law go through something like this with strung out dependency on Mom. At some point you actually have to cut the cord. It is safer the younger they are. You hope they go to college, graduate, and get a great independent job. This doesn't always happen. Like with everything else life is much easier when expectations are set early.
You may need the kids that you blew off to take care of you.