Millennials are struggling. Is it the fault of the baby boomers?

To an extent, yes.

The problem is that for the boomers, taking on lots of debt has worked out smashingly as they levered into a booming (in part due to that leverage) economy. But now we've reached the conclusion of that leveraged boom, and there is no more room to cut interest rates or increase the amount of interest as a percentage of monthly income. Prices can't fall because that would be deflationary and wreck the banks first and foremost through defaults, and everyone else after that.

There is no way out and we have to wait until compound interest, even at these minuscule rates, sparks the default wave that triggers the great deflation, or until the lack of family formation eventually destroys the economies ability to meet the periodic interest payments.

In the meantime, enjoy the ride and try to be nice.

My favorite revolutions in history have occurred when there is a mismatch between rising expectations and a grim lagging reality. Millennials were raised to have higher expectations than perhaps any other generation before them, and yet most of them feel like the reality of day to day life is headed in the opposite direction. We'll see what happens but the ingredients historically necessary for domestic revolution are certainly present.

Gen-X here... I'd say its 80% the fault of baby boomers, 10% the fault of Gen-X and 10% of millenials own making.

Lots of Millenials have serious issues with expectation management. Lots of millenials want to work in glamourous industries rather than boring and unpleasant ones that pay well and are somewhat secure.

Gen-X didn't complain early enough about baby boomers selfishness and just got depressed. If we'd have been more politically active earlier maybe it wouldn't have been so bad. We got on with our silent generation parents and they left us what money they had as an inheritance.

Baby Boomers though are the most selfish generation in history who have profited from a period where going to university wasn't just free but you were paid to go, where being able to get 3 jobs at the same time wasn't impossible, where jobs for life with full salary pension were common, where high quality publicly funded housing was sold off on the cheap and where governments realised that housing speculation was a way for the middle class to feel like an entrepreneur.

Every baby boomer who speculated in property decided it was ok for everyone else's kids to struggle to buy a home - when lots of people decides to do that it's a bad situation.

The unwritten contract between parents and children was always that the parent would sacrifice and try to provide a better life for their children and grandchildren.

Fast forward to now where Baby Boomers inherited their parent's wealth and have decided that they're going to spend not just their parent's wealth but also spend all of their own wealth early to travel the world and enjoy life rather than give it to their kids: https://www.ft.com/content/9b4a7bfe-5933-11e4-9546-00144feab...

The problem with this is going to be that once they spend all their own money they will expect the state and their children to look after them despite not handing down any money. The same millenials who have struggled to earn money their entire lives, and will have to compete with AI and robotics.

I fully expect to see many many baby boomer pensioners being left to rot by their millenial children in poor state-run retirement homes as the millenials realise how their own parents screwed them over one last time.

I truly feel sorry for millenials - lots of articles talk up their flaws but they are in no way equivalent to the borderline apocalypse when they reach retirement that they're being handed by baby boomer parents.

My grandparents died in their 60s and 70s. My parents are well into their 60s, still working, and healthy as ever. I don't blame the baby boomers at all, they aren't the problem. The problem is that they're healthy, healthcare is the best it's ever been!

Millennials should be inheriting their family houses to start their own families, they should be inheriting money to start businesses, CEOs and executives should be retiring so the next generation can move up. It's not happening. The world is on hold while we wait for this generation to literally die.

Too bad baby boomers are now too old to care about our problems. We won't see any solutions soon.

Millennial here. Due to childhood and social trauma I filed for disability through social security.

> “We have people with degrees doing Mickey Mouse jobs and young people who will have no occupational pension and no house to sell to see them through old age."

Correction: you have people with Mickey Mouse degrees unable to find gainful employment. Millennials that studied STEM are doing just fine.