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Comment by war1025 | Hacker News Reader

Part of that is the structure of the economy, like you say. A significant proportion of it, as a millennial myself, is people having a terrible understanding of personal finance.

If you spend all your money on things to impress people or because "you deserve them", then you end up with an empty pot.

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There have always been people with bad personal finance. The difference is that the necessities that you cannot avoid all cost orders of magnitude more—-healthcare, housing, college, childcare. This means people how a smaller margin for mistakes and even one hospital trip can put them in debt for years/decades or bankruptcy.

The rules have changed and people are still trying to live like their parents did.

Healthcare is expensive. If you are on Obamacare, it is subsidized.

Housing is expensive if you want to live in a "good" neighborhood. There are a lot of "okay" neighborhoods that people can afford just fine.

College is expensive, but it really depends on which university you go to. As much as anything, the college issue is intentional misdirection by the people who are steering parents and kids into those choices. There are very economical options, but the price tags and ramifications of those choices are usually not spelled out very well to the people making those decisions.

Edit: Childcare is absolutely expensive, to the point that I really expect having a parent stay at home to swing back around to being more normal. We have three kids and if my wife worked, it would cost more to have them in daycare than she would make while they were there.

One parent not working has massive negative externalities for everyone. For society the labour force shrinks and the economy follows. Your wife's career is effectively over after 5-10 years off for childcare. If you lose your job your family will be in trouble. If you get divorced you will not enjoy the results.

Two parents working has negative externalities as well. Costs adjust to what families can bear. Double incomes means increased prices and reduced purchasing power for everyone.

My wife's career never started. Her degree was worthless so she was working as a barista before we had kids. She does some work on the side, but she was never going to generate the kind of income I do solely based on our respective career choices.

If I lose my job, we can live off savings for several years. If I am unable to find work, the economy has bigger problems that are independent of my wife working or not. If I die or become disabled, that's what insurance is for.

No one enjoys divorce. In some cases it is a necessary evil, but I don't think anyone would ever characterize it as pleasant.

Instead of just going "welp, this is how things are now", there is always the option to change the rules back. How about we go back to 90% taxes on the top brackets and see how millennials fare then?

Replying to you again because I addressed your latter point, but not the first.

I absolutely agree there are things that could be changed to make life better for many people.

However, you live in the present, under the rules as they are. And from there you gain leverage to change the future.

Living as if the rules were different when they aren't just sets you up for failure.

It's the whole idea of "be so good they can't ignore you".

The rich don't make their money off of taxable income. They make their money off of appreciating assets. You can tax them all you want and it won't change a thing. You could try to create a wealth tax, but basically anyone with any assets would fight it tooth and nail and it would never go through without something akin to a communist revolution.

>basically anyone with any assets would fight it tooth and nail and it would never go through without something akin to a communist revolution.

Now you're getting it.

Also, the "wealth tax" exists, it's called the capital gains tax, and it only goes up to 20%. It should be 100%.

Even a 100% capital gains tax would be regressive relative to a true wealth tax, since it never touches the starting asset base. Also, a wealth tax incentivizes productive investments, while a capital gains tax disincentivizes them.

The majority of my net worth is tied up in appreciating assets. I would be on the side of those fighting to keep that from happening.

But how does the level of that appreciation compare to your income? What level of wealth tax would you accept if it meant that you no longer have to pay income tax?

Obviously I don't expect an answer to that - just something to consider.

Thanks to current tax policies, and how my family fits into them, I pay very little in income tax.

Asset appreciation is exponential. Income is linear. The only way to get ahead financially is to use leftover income to build a portfolio of appreciating assets.

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