Millennials Didn’t Kill the Economy. The Economy Killed Millennials | Hacker News Reader

Millennials Didn’t Kill the Economy. The Economy Killed Millennials

theatlantic.com

97 pointspaulpauper142 comments

I think this is really the tale of two Millennials and is a phenomenon that actually effects all generations currently. There is a concentration of wealth in this country and the wage increases in the bottom 90% have not kept up with the cost of goods limiting the purchasing power of this group. This issue is exacerbated by the increasing costs of goods and education leading to higher levels of debt for Millennials.

Anecdotal evidence shows that a lot of new grads with technical degrees are getting offers around $200k in the bay area and seattle (these are the other Millennials). By 5 years they're making more than many boomers did over a very successful 30+ year career. Clearly this is only a small subset of Millennials, but it is an example of concentration. I'm not sure whether this discrepancy between "classes" of new grads existed previously, does anyone have insight?

But isn't it fun lying about how you got a "good deal" on your rent

I enjoy being even more unrelatable when I just say "Yep." when people ask "Isn't that area expensive"

Yes, this is why us 10%ers have a responsibility to the 90%.

At the same time, I'm not sure how you can reasonably say things like 'The cost of goods went up'.

If you want to blame government inflation, sure, but the cost of technology has plummeted in the last 10/20/30 years. Food is the cheapest its ever been, cost to move a mile cheapest, etc...

Its not genuine to speak that prices are going up.

Yes, this is why us 10%ers have a responsibility to the 90%.

In the past, the wealthy created communal public spaces and affordable services of value. This is how they served the general public. Now, I see what used to be "every-person" activities re-cast as luxuries. Take your family out to a major league ball game? Take them out to the movies? What used to be cheap forms of entertainment will now set you back $100-200 bucks. Nowadays, for cheap entertainment, you have to take your family to see the bush league games, and you stay at home and rent movies when they go to streaming.

Yes, other things are cheaper. However, many of the things that go to having a sense of real physical community aren't getting cheaper, and social media, with all of its potential toxicity and truth warping is taking up more and more of our attention.

> In the past, the wealthy created communal public spaces and affordable services of value.

This ended, unsurprisingly, when government displaced them in that role.

I guess why that's why I see all those plaques and statues in public and private parks thanking the donors... because the government.

$200k if you add to this year-end taxes, cost of living, you can barely finish the month.

$200k as a solo person without kids gets you a fine life even in bay area. If you are a couple making $400k, you can even have kids and still be all right.

I think it works both ways. My Millennial daughter and her friends looks at their parents lifestyle and say "not interested". Not interested in a big house in the boonies filled with stuff you don't want and don't need. They seem to want experiences rather than stuff. That's having a positive effect on the service economy and a negative effect on the stuff economy.

I'm fascinated by this, because I see it as well.

I'm fascinated because when did owning a home with a family become 'not' an experience? Legitimately confused by this.

I have a house in a rural area (because of where I work) with a wife, kid, cat, and dog. Most of my friends are just aghast that I would choose to 'settle down' because I won't get any experiences at all. I mean, I'm not dead. . .

I don't get it.

A lot of us don't want kids early (if at all) and don't want the displeasure of spending $12k/yr in interest with $7k/yr in property taxes that rise $100-200/mo every year.

source: Millennial trying to sell his house to go back to having less "stuff." And more liberty to go and do whatever I want.

Maybe it comes from the majority of us going through our parents divorcing, or seeing our families livelihoods destroyed in the 2001 and 2008 recession. Maybe it's FOMO. Who knows. I noticed that when I did move to a cheaper COL city I had far more millennial friends with kids and houses. So, maybe it's just that, the unaffordability of where a lot of us are living leading to later children and thus lack of interest in house life.

>So, maybe it's just that, the unaffordability of where a lot of us are living leading to later children and thus lack of interest in house life.

Fascinating. I actually hadn't considered that. I live in a super low COL area, for full disclosure.

My 1970s 3/2 (1400sqft) in Austin 15 miles from downtown is worth around $400k. It's a huge factor in my family/life decisions. Not even comparable to CA/Sea of course. The neighborhood I'm in is probably 80% boomers (because of pricing, it's a gorgeous place people would love to raise a family).

When I moved to Dallas (significantly more affordable housing) I found that a lot more of my coworkers have families/homes.

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/26/millennials-are-flocking-to-...

Oh wow. Midwest - nearest town is 150k (so we lack some cultural opportunities, but Chicago is within a day's drive). 1900-2000sq ft 4 bedroom, 2 bath, 2 car attached garage with 800 sq ft woodshop, on 52 acres was $140k. And we paid what I thought was too much for the property when we bought it.

The lives people in this country lead are so startlingly different sometimes.

Buying a house and settling down with your wife, kids and dogs is a death sentence. It literally means "I will [most likely] die here". Something to avoid.

That's the attitude I don't understand. Can you flush that out a little more?

It's like you only see point A and point Z. There are so many experiences to be had with a family that fills the middle.

I would argue that moving around constantly to travel keeps you from developing real, long-term relationships, and that those relationships are vital to being a successful, fully-realized human. Further, I would argue that while you may see some neat things, it is a death sentence to die alone.

See how ridiculous that sounds? Same thing with a family and house framed as a death sentence. It's not a lack of experiences to settle down, it's a different set of experiences. Why the values judgments?

I don't know, actually. What you're saying makes sense. Maybe it's what the media has pushed on us? I'm scared of commitment, just like everybody else.

As someone who is going to be childfree I think it is a preference thing. While I don't understand why someone would want kids I still accept it as a value in society. People often look at me like I am crazy when I express my intent not to have any children so it goes both ways.

You can enjoy the freedom to move around and still make lasting, deep relationships. In fact it's possible that you will have more relationships with a more diverse set of people. I've heard settling down in a house described as "building one's coffin". Many people die alone in the coffin they build.

Millennial here (81) and all that sounds perfect to me.

I'm pretty sure that even without a house or kids, you're still going to die. Why is "I'm going to die over there" better than "I will most likely die here"?

I agree - owning a house and raising a family has been a terrific experience for me. But in talking to my daughter (senior at Yale) about this, I am coming to understand that the next generation may pursue happiness through different experiences. Things like co-living come up in these conversations. Things like Uber come up. So I ask: "Are you not, then, going to buy a house or a car?" Her answer is "correct". If such shifts are widespread, it will definitely reshape our economy.

Family, house, kids, those things are fine. I think it's best understood as a rejection of materialism, bigger is better, owning stuff that doesn't make your life better, "keeping up with the Joneses". It's a trap many saw their parents fall into, spending their lives to buy stuff they didn't need.

A big house and big lawn means a lot of your life spent mowing, cleaning, raking, doing repairs. If you've got seven children maybe that's worth it- but for most of us, a big house is a lot of additional overhead for little additional return.

Also as home ownership becomes unobtainable, there will naturally be a reaction of "fine, I didn't want a house anyway"

Last thought, there's a cultural realization that if you have kids and settle down at eighteen, many doors close to you for good. So there's a push to delay settling down at least a few years.

First, we get articles blaming Millennials for things.

Then, as people start to push back (prior to this article), we have off-hand mentions that every generation blames the younger/older generation.

But is this really equivalent? My (limited) understanding is that the Boomers were themselves quite exceptional - we're in the longest era of global-level peace, the Boomers themselves WERE a "boom" of population, the extended middle class of the 50s was an anomaly, etc. Add to this that Millennials face new issues in ways that other generations haven't: climate change is literally a sea-level change, education is more costly, communication is more global, and of course, for the US and many other countries, the next generation that will support them is much smaller rather than larger. Certainly there are parallels to previous generational conflicts, but I don't see a reason to shrug this off as just normal.

I'm GenX, and the articles when I was hitting the workforce were dismissive and condescending, but in a "aw, they're young and naive" as opposed to "they are failures as human beings" that I read in a lot of the Millennial coverage.

Does anyone know of studies into whether this IS just normal inter-generational gripes?

I suspect that it's "normal intergenerational gripes" except amplified by our modern super inflammatory media...

It seems like every generation can be viewed as heroic or decadent, depending on which lens you use - the Boomers lived through the Civil Rights mivement, stagflation and the end of the Cold War, but then the hippies ran up enormous debts and turned into greedy 80's business men. Their parents (the "Greatest Generation") survived the Great Depression and turned the US into an economic powerhouse for WW2, but also were horrifically racist and sexist by modern standards. Now Millenials are shifting to this modern world where you need to be hyper educated to get a job, they've been somewhat helicopter-parented (so they have all the anti-fragile problems) but on the other hand they tend to save more, they're better educated and more culturally sensitive...

I appreciate the response, but this is exactly the viewpoint I'm trying to evaluate. Yes, every generation has good/bad. That in no way means that each generational conflict is roughly equivalent. I mean, I don't think MY generation faced this level of hostility and blame from the older generations, so at least one example is subjectively/anecdotally different.

But ultimately, anecdotes != data. I want data.

I remember the 90s when GenX could do no right and worse things were blamed on GenX than Millenials have had to deal with.

Those are not my recollections. Yes, we GenXers had "oh, what will we do with them" articles, but the tone and acrimony were different, and faded quickly once GenXers hit 30, whereas the Millenials are definitely into their 30s and the tone is only getting more bitter, not less. YMMV, of course.

The whole generations thing was made up by the Boomers in ad agencies trying to sell more products through demographic targeting. Just as many other Boomers were fascinated by astrology/horoscopes and "Ages", they latched on to a lot of weird pseudo-science that stuck and says a lot more about them anything else.

They venerated their parents and placed them on a pedestal "The Greatest Generation". They hated a lot of their earliest kids, "GenX". They doted and spoiled their later kids and early grandkids, "Millennial", then decided it was fun to blame them for how much they were doted upon/spoiled.

Boomers aren't even that special in that way that they've named themselves the "Baby Boomers", sure they were a massive population boom following a couple huge wars, but demographically speaking they mostly just put the planet back into the usual Malthusian cycle. There are more GenX and Millennials than Baby Boomers, because human birthrates trend towards the exponential. The Boomers aren't some big peak in the graph of human birthrates versus deathrates, they are a rise back towards "normalcy" after a giant trough.

The next generations that are supporting the Baby Boomers as they head into retirement and senescence aren't much "smaller", they are just less equipped, due to erosions in social contracts that the Boomers inherited, and overall a larger trend back towards greed than their parents. (In those cases, they are largely right that their parents were better them in general.)

(Also, the Boomers have been aware of climate change since the 70s. Yet another thing they've left to their kids and grandkids rather than tackle themselves.)

> The whole generations thing was made up by the Boomers in ad agencies trying to sell more products through demographic targeting. Just as many other Boomers were fascinated by astrology/horoscopes and "Ages", they latched on to a lot of weird pseudo-science that stuck and says a lot more about them anything else.

And yet you're making copious use of those labels and assign traits and actions to the subsets of people labeled thus. So what is it now – made-up or real?

Still made up. Broad swath generalizations remain broad swath generalizations. I can't claim to great satire in the writing above, but certainly there is an intentional frisson of irony.

> The whole generations thing was made up by the Boomers in ad agencies trying to sell more products through demographic targeting.

It wasn't made up by Boomers, and the not-Boomers who made it up weren't in ad agencies. As agencies latched on to it, though.

> They venerated their parents and placed them on a pedestal "The Greatest Generation".

Actually, no. That's the Silent Generation that erected that pedestal for the GG, not the Boomers.

> They hated a lot of their earliest kids, "GenX".

Don't see any real evidence of this. (GenX is also largely the children of the Silent Generation.)

> They doted and spoiled their later kids and early grandkids, "Millennial", then decided it was fun to blame them for how much they were doted upon/spoiled.

Don't see any evidence for either half of this, either. It's not Boomers writing most of the Millennial generation-shaming (that's Gen Xers) or Millennials wrtit most of the Boomer generation-shaming (that's also Gen Xers).

> Boomers aren't even that special in that way that they've named themselves the "Baby Boomers", sure they were a massive population boom following a couple huge wars,

Just one specific war, and you just contradicted yourself.

> but demographically speaking they mostly just put the planet back into the usual Malthusian cycle.

There is no “usual Malthusian cycle”.

> There are more GenX and Millennials than Baby Boomers, because human birthrates trend towards the exponential.

I think you mean that human birth rates tend to be constant, producing exponential growth. But even that isn't true over the relevant period: the low US birthrate during the Boomer birth years is over 20 per 1000, which in turn is greater than the high of the next generation, over which birth rates declined to a low of under 15 per 1000; there was a slight jump up then for the Millennials, where birthrate hovered between about 15.5 and 16.5 per 1000, before dropping again for the post-Millenial generation (not clear which of the competing names is going to stick for that.)

There are more Millennials and Gen X, combined, than Boomers, but that's a larger span of birth years , and more recent so fewer of them, proportionately, have died. (And we're just about at the Millennial/Boomer population crossover, Gen X is still smaller than either.)

> The next generations that are supporting the Baby Boomers as they head into retirement and senescence aren't much "smaller",

Gen X absolutely is, but in part that's an artifact of a slightly narrower window of birth years.

More to the point, they certainly have a smaller worker to retiree ratio than was the case when the Boomers were in a similar position to either Gen X or Millenials now.

> Also, the Boomers have been aware of climate change since the 70s.

The Boomers in general were not; it may have been the scientific consensus since the 1970s, but the Boomers weren't the people concealing that consensus in the 1970s (that was largely the Silent and Greatest generations.) The eruption of climate change as an issue ofmhigh political salience tracks pretty well with Boomers gaining political power.

> My (limited) understanding is that the Boomers were themselves quite exceptional - we're in the longest era of global-level peace

What does “global level peace” mean?

> the Boomers themselves WERE a "boom" of population,

True, but that hardly makes them exceptional.

> the extended middle class of the 50s was an anomaly

But, again, not one that makes the Boomers, who had nothing to do with cresting that, exceptional.

> What does “global level peace” mean?

I've often read that we're at an extended level of peace between major powers that is basically unprecedented. While we still have too much violent conflict all over the place, it's nonetheless _different_ from previous eras. That said, I'm not a student of history.

> True, but that hardly makes them exceptional. (RE: boomers and population)

Not exceptional in the sense of being special, but yes, exceptional in the sense that the economic burdens of previous generations are easier to shoulder when each person has less to shoulder per capita. Ditto my statement about the extended middle class - I'm not saying Boomers are special people who did things differently, I'm saying their opportunities and perspectives are not representational of previous generations, so their interactions with other generations (past and future) may not be either.

Exceptional in the sense of "being an exception", not in the sense of "being an exception through virtue"

It always seemed odd to me that non-millennials would look at millennials buying less and assume strange preferences rather than empty pockets.

I suspect when you're a journalist it's easy to take a biased sample and getting an unrepresentative result because of it.

I can ask my buddies who don't have cars why they don't have cars, and none of them will say it's empty pockets. Because my car-less buddies are a biased sample, software developer cyclists in central London.

You nailed it. NPR did a story about the class division among journalists this year, or late last year. Folks from lower-socioeconomic classes have a more difficult time getting into journalism, because of the low-wage barrier early in their careers.

So we have a class of journalists from upper-middle to upper classes. They select their experiences and their 'circles' as the experiences, and here we are.

I have no data, but I'm 100% certain that if you interview individuals with enough wealth/education/privilege to be in the same social circles as the major journalists for major organizations, your experiences aren't the standard US citizen experiences.

The economy is going to kill every generation from here on out. It is estimated that climate change will knock off 10% of the US GDP by the end of the century: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/23/climate/us-climate-report...

How do we go about changing societal expectations to stop expecting perpetual growth? People aren't going to be happy it is no longer a given their children will do better than themselves, or even that they will be capable of taking care of them in their old age due to resource and economic crunches.

Without perpetual growth wouldn't those who are not already well off have almost no hope of getting ahead? That is, it seems like currently the system only works for at least the middle class because people can invest in 401ks and mutual funds. If those were taken away then what would the non 1% have left?

Edit: To be clear, I mean this as an honest question. I see a lot of smart people arguing that expectations of growth need to change in order to tackle issues like global warming, but I don't see a scenario where that doesn't result in most people becoming serfs.

I'm all for taking action against climate change, but the 10% number is just pure fear mongering. Robert Rhode at Berkely did an excellent job of showing what the true risks are here:

https://twitter.com/RARohde/status/1067375440661307393

As politicized as this climate change has become, I would hope to see more reasoned responses in the future - but given the current environment of discussion, I won't hold my breath.

Pure fear mongering is "there's a migrant caravan of MS-13 rapist drug dealers and ISIS coming from South America with polio and smallpox".

The 10% number according to the twitter feed you linked is characterized as "unlikely and many things would have to go wrong to get there"

I'm sorry, but in a world that elected Donald Trump, "unlikely and many things would have to go wrong" is a cold comfort.

> It is estimated that climate change will knock off 10% of the US GDP by the end of the century

10% is just 3-5 years of growth.

GDP would still be 10 times higher than today, assuming 3% growth.

How do we go about changing societal expectations to stop expecting perpetual growth?

If we move civilization to a solar system wide context, we could easily support a human population of a trillion.

Paywalled for me, but I presume that's "knock 10% off of what the US GDP otherwise would have been by the end of the century" and not "the US GDP at the end of the century will be 10% lower than it is now". That is, we'll have less growth than we would have had with a better climate, but we will still have growth.

In fact, what would US GDP growth be over 80 years? The real US GDP grew 900% from 1947 to 2017, which is 70 years. If we could do anything close to that over the next 80 years, but then we lose 10%, that's still pretty good.

We don't. If those who want to fight climate change don't understand that economic growth is not an option but a requirement, then it doesn't get fought.

That said 10% in a century isn't that hard -- think of the different standard of life between 1914 and 1996. Even 10% poorer in 1996 would still be effing amazing, and we would likely have more than that without two world wars and a Spanish flue (also why I shifted it 104 years back).

In 1995, Americans over 55 bought about one-third of all new cars. Today they’re buying almost two-thirds.

That's an interesting stat.

The used car market is pretty bad. To get a relatively decent used car of a middle tier model, 3 years old, typically has 60,000 miles, they are often 12k to 18k (when I was looking a couple years ago). That is the price of a lower end new car.

If you get a used car that cost 3k to 5k, often they need a lot of tlc, and to me they are in the same condition as a $500 car was back when I was a teen (30 years ago). So my choice over the last 3 car purchase cycles has been "might as well buy new", and my last new vehicle lasted 17 years before I got rid of it.

I'm a 26 year old male living in NY.

First car: $2200 purchase price. 98 vw cabrio. 36k miles in 2010. It died in 2016 due to an electrical issue. Sold to scrap, but I also collected an insurancr pay out from it when someone hit me.

$2200 / 72 = $30 per month.

Bought a 2005 ford focus. Needed the extra space and had to buy it quickly and unexpectedly. Paid $3000, with 100k miles.

It's been 1 year already, and I'm expecting 3 total years of life out of it.

$3000 / 36 = $83 a month.

Not bad at all really! Insurance is $55 a month and I don't spend much on tires/oil.

36k miles on a 12 year old car seems super low. Seems like a great deal! Did you have to get it fixed up? I'm wondering why it only costed $2200.

Yeah, that one was an incredible deal, I agree! I loved that car to bits.

There was nothing really wrong with it in terms of like, cosmetic damage or rust or engine noises or crunchy transmission.

Vw Cabrios just have horrible electrical problems and therefore quite bad re-sell value. Coupled with a motivated seller, VW Cabrios and Jaguar X Types are probably some of the cheapest cars to buy used, but will die quite quickly, especially in wetter climates.

Towards the end of its life, my car flat out wouldn't start if it was rained on, and in the last few weeks of its life, when it was humid! Haha. Water droplets in the starter impeded electrical flow to the spark plugs.

>I don't spend much on tires

You buy stolen tires? Or cheap low end shit? That's the most important part of your car that keeps you alive.

If you're an American and you don't spend much on oil, you probably don't drive much. So the tyres last a long time. That means the cost is low.

I'm not sure what the person above was trying to say about me. Tires are like $70 here to replace, $20 to patch, and if you're like me, "free" because you ride bald tires :p

A few years back, I bought a 1998 Toyota Corolla from a mechanic for $1800 and drove it for a few years. No major repairs.

If you get a used car that cost 3k to 5k, often they need a lot of tlc

So long as you maintain a good used car, the thing most likely to cause a major repair bill is the automatic transmission. Most companies don't do a good job making them, and they'll often incur a big repair cost, eventually. So a good way to save money is to drive manual.

Toyota gets their automatic transmissions from Aisen. That's one of the few companies that knows how to make automatics that last.

Car is a giant money sink...

Life in a city with public transport is simply better. You have 2 choices in almost any big city today: spent time in traffic jams in comfort of your car, or ride public transit

Where can I find such a city?

Everywhere besides the United States.

Prague, Vienna, Berlín I guess

Cycling in Prague?! Good luck. Mostly cities on the North European Plain minus Poland. Maybe few cities in France and Spain. I get chills on the thought of cycling in London or in more busy large Italian cities.

I don't talk about cycling but about public transport.

You assume that public transit is immune to traffic jams somehow? I've spent 45 minutes on the bus to travel the 12 blocks it takes to get out of downtown Minneapolis!

It's immune to road rage from traffic jams if you aren't the bus driver. Riding in a bus a traffic jam is just more time to read a book, solve the day's crossword puzzle, get some work done, or nap.

Agreed, but that's not what the OP said.

choice 3: ride a bike

granted cycling doesn't have an accessibility solution, but it's much better for mind and body than car and public transport.

Don't forget things like floods. After the recent Houston (etc) floods I won't go near any used cars unless I know their history (vinwiki, friends). Those cars wind up at dealer lots all over the country with no mention of having been in a flood.

https://www.click2houston.com/news/investigates/channel-2-in...

~1M cars was flooded by Harvey https://weather.com/news/news/2018-02-26-hurricane-harvey-ca...

What's the source? I've bought 3 new vehicles in my life and not once was buyer age recorded in the process.

I am interested by society's desire to blame an entire generation's worth of young people for how they turned out.

Millennials did not ruin the economy in 2008, make a college education cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, or impose 40 years of wage stagnation in this country. These kids and young adults are just a product of the environment that their parents and grandparents built for them.

We should instead talk more about what Gen Xers and Baby Boomers did for the fortunes of Millennials rather than how insufferable Millennials are.

Yeah, I see boomers like my uncles talking about how millenials are the "participation trophy" generation, without any awareness that it was their generation handing out the participation trophies to millenials.

Right. Every generation blames the next (a tale as old as time), while not examining their role in it. Which would be much more productive.

See Jonathan Haidt's book "The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure" for an insightful examination.

As the son of boomers and parent of two millennials my observation is that it was my generation handing out those trophies (not that I agree with the practice, quite the contrary). I didn't get participation trophies when I was a kid and I was a perfect candidate because I was awkward and uncoordinated and never won a thing for coming in first place (in sports anyway).

But I saw my kids get them here and there...

>As the son of boomers and parent of two millennials

I guess this is somewhat normal but it's so weird for me to hear, millennials are 81-96 so it's entirely possible for you, a Gen X (65-80), to have a millennial child but it seems so off to me.

I think because the millennial date range is too large, it encompasses people who grew up without computers in the home or cellphones, e.g. 81-90ish, but also people who are "digital natives", 90-ish to 96. My friend group is 37 through 24 and the difference between those two ages is striking enough so as to be completely different.

I don't like the term "digital native" at all, but I have to disagree with your age ranges. We mid-to-late 80s children might have been a little older when computers were introduced, but it was absolutely a part of growing up - first computers, then mobile phones.

> We mid-to-late 80s children might have been a little older when computers were introduced, but it was absolutely a part of growing up

Not really surprised, since (as an early 1970s kid) most of my circle at school had computers by the time “mid-to-late 80s children” were being born.

I put that term in quotes because I have similar misgivings but I haven't found another term that really captures what I'm talking about.

>it was absolutely a part of growing up - first computers, then mobile phones.

You're correct but missing an important difference, it was a _part_ of our coming of age but for people who are on the younger side of millennials it wasn't a "part" of their world, they were literally soaked in it from birth. There is difference between, "I got my first computer at home when I was 10 and then I remember a few years later when we got dial-up and then when I was 15 I got a flip phone." and, "The internet was a given in my home, computers existed everywhere, and I got a phone at 10."

The broadening of the millennial range is a noticeable trend. I chalk it up to the agenda of any given article author.

> The broadening of the millennial range is a noticeable trend

Broadening from what base? It was open-ended when coined, and the people who coined I later proposed a 2004 cutoff; most definitions in use are narrower, not broader (though some start earlier.)

Broadening in the sense that I was in generation X for the first thirty-odd years of my life but then in recent years I've been lumped in with millennials.

edit/ You're even admitting to observing the same thing, are you not, by commenting on the dynamic nature of the starting range?

> Broadening in the sense that I was in generation X for the first thirty-odd years of my life but then in recent years I've been lumped in with millennials.

That's...improbable. While there is a range of starting dates for the Millenials, I'm pretty sure it was within a few years of the term be coined in 1987 that the current range of common starting dates (roughly 1977-1982, with two most common, in descending order of frequency of use, being 1981 and 1977) was reached.

> You're even admitting to observing the same thing, are you not, by commenting on the dynamic nature of the starting range

No, acknowledging that there have long been differences between different sources as to the start (and even moreso historically, though less currently, end) dates is not the same as claiming that there is a trend of broadening.

If there is a trend, it's of narrowing. Pretty much no one now uses the 2004 end date the original users of the phrase stated in 2012, and while ending dates as late as 1999-2000 were once common (a very common definition was Millenials are those born in the 1980s or 1990s), most sources seem to now use an end date of 1996.

Allow me to introduce to you a concept known as "scapegoating"...

>make a college education cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, or impose 40 years of wage stagnation in this country.

Lets see if this exaggeration is upvoted or downvoted by HN whales.

Its a very sympathetic argument, but its not true. Curious how our overlords respond.

EDIT: Since I cant post, I'll respond here. Someone posted links saying-

> the College Board reports that a moderate college budget for an in-state public college for the 2017–2018 academic year averaged $25,290. A moderate budget at a private college averaged $50,900.

> college education cost hundreds of thousands of dollars

According to your source, this is 4x cheaper than the (200k+ that OP claimed)

And the wages have gone up, with inflation(from your link). Not sure if you should blame the government for this, but I don't see anyone in this thread complaining about Fiat currency policy.

It is true by all available quantifiable metrics.

EDIT: From your own source:

>academic year

That is the budget for one, 1, uno, academic year. There are typically 4 academic years required for the majority of degrees.

Sorry, but this is just... True?

https://www.collegedata.com/cs/content/content_payarticle_tm...

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/07/for-most-us-...

I think you're forgetting to multiply by 4.

$50900 * 4 = $203,600.

I blame millenial journalists for writing click-baity articles blaming millenials for market shifts experienced by millenials and created by millenials. I don't read stupid generation-shaming crap from serious journalists in legitimate news outlets.

Er, actually that's a function of the market for such articles, I assume mainly driven by older folks looking for reasons to blame millennials for anything and everything.

I don't think young journalists have control over what people prefer to click on, and they definitely like to click on that.

I mean, that's all kind of bullshit, too. In the same sort of way that if you don't drive a Prius or aren't a vegan you contribute to climate change.

Gen X'ers and Baby Boomers didn't really do shit except live life in the time they did like Millennials and Gen Z'ers do now; it was the people in power who had impact.

There's too much pointing fingers in the wrong direction when it comes to these discussions. It wasn't my father who fucked my future over, though people elected during his time had significant impact on educational and housing policies today. You could say he voted for these things, but that's still painting an entire generation in the wrong light, sometimes you don't have a choice.

Imagine in the future blaming Millennials and Gen Z'ers for the problems in 2040 instead of blaming people like Trump and Macron. Incredible.

What? Who voted those people into power? Who decided what to buy, thereby improving the market share of one company over another? Who decided that mass-produced, disposable goods were the way to go with no thought about the long-term impact? Who secured their own nest-egg and then actively worked to drive down wages and costs to improve investment returns?

Saying the entire generation except those in power didn't do shit but live life is sort of downplaying the impact of choices every single person made. Choices made with seemingly no thought to their longer-term implications for the world.

Also, pulling 'those in power' out of the context of their generation doesn't really make sense to me. That statement appears to want to remove responsibility from literally every person who was alive, except maybe governmental leaders and the heads of the top 100 companies or however many.

I would argue that you are both correct and incorrect. They did live life in their time, exactly how we are living now - just living life day to day within the context of their times. But that doesn't remove responsibility for their decisions. It appears to me that boomers especially lived their lives with less emphasis on what the future may hold and less focus on the long-term implications of everyday people's decisions. They appeared to live without understanding that they really are a small part of what we would call society's choices, but a part nonetheless.

God I hope all that makes sense. I feel like maybe it rambled a little.

No one age group ("generation") voted Trump into office/power. You can't blame GenX, Boomers, GenY, or Millenials specifically for the current political climate. You can't even blame "Conservatives" specifically -- if Trump had only won the Conservative vote he'd have lost the election.

The world is complicated. Reductionism is great for story-telling, but these stories should not be confused for anything other than an approximation, like a map is only an approximation of the territory.

One age group _overwhelmingly_ voted for Brexit though.

That's what I'm saying. The person I responded to was trying to absolve the current generation of the state of affairs which future generations will have to endure. And that's just not accurate.

Some things (like Brexit) are solidly on the backs of one generation, but others (oh Trump) aren't as easy to draw distinctions. Therefore, you can't just wave your hand and cast blame on previous or future generations.

They bought mass-produced, disposable goods because that's the kind of product that was in stores. Stores themselves were fairly new. Not that long before, goods were artisanal, produced in low volumes by skilled craftsmen. Obtaining such a product frequently required a personal relationship, a long wait, and a lot of money.

The 1950s American consumer culture enjoyed by the parents of middle-class Boomers was a time of significant gains in living standards, both perceived and actual. Refraining from that life would have meant being left behind on the margins of society. Their children, Boomers, didn't build the world they lived in: they just all tried to optimize for their well-being and choose the least bad out of options presented, just like everyone else. Moral questions about collective responsibility are always odd, because swimming against the wave requires one to value a moral code over their stability and prosperity: either because they're far from peril and afford to take a stand a moral stand, or because their safety is already precarious and they have more to gain than to lose.

The people getting by in the middle preserve that by conforming. They buy the disposable stuff in the store, because the alternative has a higher upfront cost. They project a political stance that works best in their peer group, but in the presence of opportunity and information, they won't vote in a way that might endanger their status. The collective actions of each generation's majority is what led us to where we are today, but it's a mistake to treat their choices as a selfish display. Self-preservation is normal. Examine the factors that limited their choices. That's where the course of the future was already decided, years ahead of time.

> Who voted those people into power?

So, if you are a voter (or even if you're not!) in today's political landscape, you're responsible for the outcome.

> Who decided what to buy...

If you're a consumer, you're first-hand making a decision about the future that children should live in.

> Who secured their own nest-egg and then actively worked to drive down wages and costs to improve investment returns?

I wasn't aware those who have held mutual funds had actively worked to drive down wages. How did they do that? Did they fly out, sit in shareholder meetings, and ask if there was a way they could stop paying employees so much?

In the 70s and 80s, was that something Americans did, besides taking vacations, and flying kites with their kids?

Is there a way for people who want to retire to do this now? How do I go about actively making decisions in publicly traded companies; I wasn't aware the average American with a 401(k) could do this.

> Saying the entire generation except those in power didn't do shit but live life is sort of downplaying the impact of choices every single person made.

Yeah, you're absolutely right. All people who eat meat, _all_ people, are responsible for climate change. People who eat meat. People who drive to work. People who work for companies that have a net positive carbon footprint. Because you have the right to choose where you work, so that's not an excuse! People who use phones.

Can you tell me what phone manufacturer has suppliers that have entirely net negative carbon footprints? Ones that don't contribute to abuse in any realm of their logistics cycle?

Please.

God forbid you contribute to the growth of any Russell 3000 component or company abroad who has a net positive carbon footprint (hint: we all do).

I'm curious where this self-righteous attitude comes from, and why it's so pervasive today. Has this always been the case? Are we just finding new ways of expressing it today?

And at what point does this self-righteousness end? Should I concern myself with the tens of thousands of factors that contribute to the evolution of society? Which ones should I concern myself with the most, surely there's an answer with this surety of response.

You're so confident about this. Thankfully, we have such confident generations around now who can tell us where we're all wrong. I can't wait for my children to tell me how shamefully I lived my life.

> Who voted those people into power?

For most of the things they Boomers get blamed for? The Silent and Greatest Generations, mostly.

Gen X here.

We are trying. Voting for progressive policies and people to grow the middle class. But we are a small voting block.

Two things that come to mind when I read articles like this.

The first one is what do you expect when the Federal Reserve target inflation rate is 2%. Over a 20, 30, or 40 year time span everything at least doubles in price.

The second thing that comes to mind is that nowadays everything seems to be a racket designed to extract as much money from a person as possible. All in the name of higher stock prices. Look at the number of things that are now subscription based. Meaning you never actually own anything.

There is another final thing that stuck in my head when reading the article. Who and how are "success" being defined. Just because someone doesn't own a house as big if not bigger than their parents does not mean they aren't successful. Same thing for cars, clothes, etc.

I consider myself fairly well-informed, but I just don't understand why it is considered good for people to own expensive cars.

Are people actually not getting where they need to go, or are they just making their existing cars last longer?

They are an "engine of the economy", but what does that mean? Is it possible to have a less wasteful engine of the economy? Can something abstract, like artwork, ever be an engine of the economy?

What would happen if the economy only produced stuff that we really want? Would that be bad, and if so, how?

HN mindset: "I despise clickbait. Misleading, editorialized titles designed to trigger emotional responses? No thank you!"

Reality: this comments section.

The government has slowly killed the economy. As decades of accumulating onerous regulation, heavily distortionary policy, and over-taxation catch up with our economy.

Why are millennials so associated with being victims ?

Because they are the first American generation significantly economically worse off than their parents.

Even US life expectancy is dropping, as are average IQ’s.

Is life expectancy dropping because millennials are dying? My understanding is that it's due largely to the opioid crisis, which mostly affects people in older generations.

Also obesity.

My anecdata is that I know 4 people from my graduating class who are dead today because of opioids. I don't know what the rates are, but it definitely affects the young as well.

The opioid crisis isn't limited to older generations, it's definitely impacting millenials as well[0]. The millenials that are most likely to be impacted just tend to be from more economically depressed areas.

0: https://qz.com/1169672/us-millennials-were-almost-20-more-li...

Depending on the source the millennial generation is usually considered to start around 1980-82, making them currently 36-38. Speaking only for myself (age 34) I've seen and heard about many people that I grew up with getting caught up in opioid addiction.

The first first, or the first since the prosperity boom in the middle of the 20th century? The generation that went through the Depression surely was worse off than their parents.

Great Depression was followed and preceded by extreme economic growth. So, they where still better off over time.

The depth of the depression the US per capita GDP only dropped to ~1920 levels. (Industrialization is a hell of a drug.) It recovered by the end of the depression and the 40's was a massive boom.

You really want a logarithmic scale to do these kind of comparisons over time. But even that misses the kind of structural changes that are really harming Millennials specifically.

Maybe because they have been preyed upon since birth by corporations, advertising, and media, shit on by the previous generations and perpetually viewed as children incapable of thinking and acting for themselves. "Maybe it's not the people that are sick... Maybe it's their environment." - Dave Chapelle

Somehow "Have millennials killed X?" turned out to be a really good clickbait article format. I suspect that this is due to clickbait becoming widespread as millennials came of age. At this point it's just going on momentum.

Don't forget ageism. Older people love memes with "back in my day" in the headline that shows some perceived difference between when they were young and the youth of today. I have friends who sometimes share that stuff on their social media. When I jokingly called out a friend recently about his "back in my day" jokes, he didn't even realize he was indulging in ageism. I imagine most don't.

Perhaps a system that is unsustainable long term is showing signs of strain? Maybe they really are victims relatively speaking. I don’t know. I don’t think it has to do with being snowflakes or otherwise lacking mettle.

Yeah, no shit.

Millennials started getting the vote in 2000. Many crucial elections since then have been extremely close. They had the opportunity to have the decisive say in outcomes. How's their track record of choices working out?

I don't understand the downvotes. But this is true. In the end, there is only one fact of life: "We get the world we deserve".

Except we start with "We get the world our parents leave us."

Of there's more other groups, they'll get outvoted.

It's hard to make the case that they've been able to decide any generational issues yet.

The seem to participate in elections pretty much in same rate as previous generations did in same age. They also did not managed to get their way.

> Many crucial elections since then have been extremely close. They had the opportunity to have the decisive say in outcomes.

The one does not follow from the other. Even assuming that it's reasonable to consider a monolithic Millennial voting bloc, they may have been "extremely closely" outvoted.

"millennials continue to have the lowest voter turnout of any age group. Only about 46 percent voted in the last presidential election; compared to 72 percent of the Silent Generation" [1]

"This election [2016] was effectively decided by 107,000 people in these three states [MI, PA, WI]. Trump won the popular vote there by that combined amount. That amounts to 0.09 percent of all votes cast in this election." [2]

[1] https://www.npr.org/2016/05/16/478237882/millennials-now-riv...

[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/2016-electi...

Millennials have made up a smaller, but growing demographic since 2000. What about the other, larger demographics? If you wanted us to make better choices, you shouldn't have left us with the current problems without properly equipping us. Now we're trying to solve today's issues as best we can given our circumstances all while you complain and moan. A thank you is all you need to say, really. We're bailing out your lifestyle and voting choices of the past at the cost of our own. We don't always get it right, but we're learning fast. Just be sure to step aside when the time comes so we can actually make some meaningful change in the world.

> If you wanted us to make better choices, you shouldn't have left us with the current problems without properly equipping us.

We equipped you with the vote starting at age 18. Voting age was lowered from 21 in 1971. So you had a head start on many boomers and all the silent/greatest generations.

> Just be sure to step aside when the time comes so we can actually make some meaningful change in the world.

Oh, how I yearn for that day to come.

Ha. In 2000, there were about 9 million Americans between 18 and 20 years old, and about 200 million people older than 20.

Even now, people 20-40 are a minority of the voting populace.

It is unfair to blame the outcome of all the elections, and hence the policies of the last 20 years, on a minority people eligible to vote.

Voter turnout by 18-21 year-olds in 2000 was the lowest in recorded history.

The presidential election was decided by less than 600 votes.

In 2000, the millenial voting bloc would have been like 1% of the total US voting population. Are you seriously laying the blame on 18 years old and not the 19 to 120 year old that make up almost all the votes? Also decisive in what way? Between Bush and Clinton? Or Obama and McCain? Trump or Clinton? Republican or Democrat? Why didn't previous generations make the "decisive" vote? Seems like whichever side you vote for, things don't get any better. Wars don't stop. And the rich get richer. But yes, lets blame those pesky 18 years old of 2000. Also, are millenials supposed to vote as a unit? I thought we were all individuals.

> In 2000, the millenial voting bloc would have been like 1% of the total US voting population

The presidential election that year was decided by less than 600 votes.

> Why didn't previous generations make the "decisive" vote?

Previous generations did make the decisive vote, in their favor. Millennials turn out to vote at the lowest rate of any age group, and so have missed their chances to be the deciders.

> Also, are millenials supposed to vote as a unit? I thought we were all individuals.

Millennials might be expected to vote their self-interest, in the aggregate. The linked article suggests the possibility that they could have done a better job at that.

> Millennials turn out to vote at the lowest rate of any age group

Probably not any more, since the subsequent generation can now vote and is fully within, while leading edge Millenials are out of, the 18-29 age group that has consistently been the lowest turnout age group. People are so used to conflating “Millenial” and “young adult”...

"millennials continue to have the lowest voter turnout of any age group. Only about 46 percent voted in the last presidential election; compared to 72 percent of the Silent Generation" [1]

[1] https://www.npr.org/2016/05/16/478237882/millennials-now-riv...

Yes, from 2016 and using a definition of Millenials that went through 1998, so that “Millenials” was the age group including 18 year olds. (Which, if you click through to the cited source, you'll find out that the source has been revised to change.)

This is just restating the long established trend, true across generations, that the youngest-voting age group turns out at the lowest rates (it would be interesting, perhaps, to compare Millenials against other generations voting patterns at the same age to separate out generational from age trends, but this is just misattributing a consistent age trend to the generation that happens to be in an age category at the time of the analysis.)

The first presidential election boomers were eligible to vote in was 1968. Turnout among 18-24 year-olds was over 50%. Similar rates in 1964 and 1972. [1]

[1] https://www.census.gov/prod/2014pubs/p20-573.pdf

> The first presidential election boomers were eligible to vote in was 1968.

1964, actually, but only in Georgia. (Georgia lowered voting age to 18 in 1943, well ahead of the 26th Amendment.)

> Turnout among 18-24 year-olds was over 50%.

There were like four states with a voting age lower than 21, and only one with 18. And it was the height of the Vietnam draft (hence the renewed push for lowering voting age, which had its first big—but nationally unsuccessful—push during WWII.)

So, you've got both external conditions motivating elevated youth vote and stats skewed so that the youngest part of the 18-24 range is underepresented in eligible pool, so it's mostly reflecting the 21-24 subset. But even with all that, and it may not be a big distortion: it's still the worst age group for turnout in those elections, and the movement between and immediately after those years follows general turnout the same way it does through the Gen X periods to the (relative) youth voting surge in 2004-2008, which seems to have subsided in 2012.

Only a small fraction of Millennials would have been able to vote in 2000, and depending on your definition of the generation (stop date of '95 or '00) the full group either got to vote for the first time in the 2014 midterms or will get to vote for the first time in the 2020 elections.

This is an important thing to bring up but from a different perspective. Most millennials didn't want either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump in the last election. That lack of choice should not be blamed on a generation when the Clinton campaign subverted the DNC (and hence the popular candidate) and Trump was an unknown wildcard in a long list of crusty GOP candidates.

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