Millennials are sicker than Gen X, which bodes ill for the future economy | Hacker News Reader

Millennials are sicker than Gen X, which bodes ill for the future economy

deseret.com

61 pointsfreedomben69 comments

Don't the other generations feel the specter of dread hovering over us? Like you are running on a treadmill as fast as you can and knowing that if you trip or stumble, even a little, it's over and what progress you've made will be undone and you'll end up wandering the streets, muttering to yourself?

Or maybe it's just me?

Among the many things that make me feel ill is that byline. We're painfully aware that we exist to serve "The Economy"- perhaps _that_ is what is making us ill, that we must forever justify our existence in terms of the movements of bits of green paper?

From a prior generation, I think we served you a shit sandwich. I prefer to be optimistic, and believe you guys can work it out, overcome it, and move on. I also tend to be mildly pessimistic and I think tumbrils await my cohort, for the wrongs done to future history: we really did crap in the swimming pool and expect you to learn to swim in it, and then clean it up.

We were not kind. We might get what we deserve.

We don't need to engage in inter-generational griefing. Yeah, my parents had a much nicer economy but it's not like they are in a great place now and they did not build the systems we find ourselves trapped within today. The shortness of vision can't really be blamed on any one generation. It's a collective human failure.

I think it's just a few individuals of each generations that are responsible for most of the world's ills while the others were either just trying to survive or thinking "there's not much I can do about it, let's just try to have a decent life".

Millenials are just at that age where their generation can start having an influence on the world. So they can still blame most of the world's ills on boomers. In 40 years, young people will blame millenials the same way boomers are blamed today.

Because millenials will be the latest active representatives of a generation where a few abused their positions of power and made the world a worse place than it was.

Don't worry, they already are. For some reason a little puke was claiming I was responsible for a policy that was created by a president when I was 5 years old. I think he was just looking for an excuse to say OK boomer and didn't care I was born in the mid 80s.

We don't need to engage in inter-generational griefing

Why not? A huge amount of post WW1 was about precisely that: generals trained for war on horseback, leading men into mechanised warfare. The 'never again' peace movement was a reaction. (wrong headed maybe, but this is how I believe it happened: it was inter-generational griefing.)

The EU exists because a generation of new voters emerged from the ashes of WW2 and said 'we're not going back there' -The election of the Atlee Labour government was the generation who fought WW2 saying "no" to churchill, from the generation who fought WW1 and the Boer war.

Inter-generational griefing is routine, normal and I would suggest neccessary. The succeeding generations have to seize control of the agenda, and stop the prior generations over-reaching their stated goals.

I was just thinking we don't get enough physical activity and we eat too much junk.

I’ve had these exact same issues for the past 1 1/2 years. This is the time when I switched from a part-time to a full-time job, which often times leaves me utterly exhausted in the evenings and feels like I can never get to a „it‘s done“-point. Boy, am I looking forward to a break over christmas time!

This is either the best time to be alive ever, or pretty close to it. Get some perspective.

You don't need to serve the economy, just the customers of your employer. Furthermore, even if that's too burdening, in many countries you can still move to the forest and live free of any ties to the economy.

Legitimately wondering, which countries are those?

The United States for all practical purposes. The Intermountain West is full of public land where dispersed camping is okay. You just have to move your camp every two weeks but humans lived like that for a long, long time...

In Siberia there are areas where you'll be the only human for dozens of miles in any direction. Canadian north and Amazon in Brazil should be similar. Of course, these are not the friendliest environment, but neither were the US before they were civilized by "the economy", that the OP seems to loathe so much.

GenX here: we were raised with the assumption that if we didn't die in the looming nuclear holocaust, it would be AIDS that gets us.

Add to that the recessions and stagflation of the '70s and the fear that the Japanese would overtake the US economically in the '80s.

We've made good progress on the AIDS crisis, but nuclear warfare seems back on the table again.

Working longer hours at more jobs just to make ends meet, while the people at the top add more 0’s to their bank account, health care costs rising while income is stagnant or worse. Shouldn’t be that surprising, really, though my comment is an oversimplification.

The “economic impact” being the focus leaves a bad taste in my mouth; it’s the economic impact itself thats making it worse, if not outright causing it.

I can give some more real world observed results.

I once worked in an industry once that wound up forcing long periods of excessive overtime. Think 60+ hour weeks for months on end. And for peanuts (16 to 22 an hour.)

The combined stress resulted in the following issues among the team:

- Employee #1 committed suicide the weekend after valentines day, (work stress led to alcoholism relapse, then everything else fell apart)

- Employee #2 wound up completely throwing out his back (i.e. could not move and had to crawl into his house) because of the bad chair ergonomics.

- Employee #4 had multiple nervous breakdowns, ruining their marriage and setting back their life years.

- Employee #5 relapsed on some bad habits involving opioids.

Of the above 4, 2 were tobacco users and their intake increased substantially during these time periods. This was true of others on the team that didn't fall into these more extreme examples.

But even in those other cases, I saw ruined marriages, slow spirals into bad habits (gambling, drinking, adult clubs, etc.) and overall years taken off peoples life from stress.

So yeah, long hours are no joke.

Edit: I skipped #3 on the list because the way they responded to stress wasn't easy to delineate. (They were however also a smoker and would increase intake under stress)

On the other hand... it's worth noting that #3, when under high workload stress, would become very judgemental, easily offended and prone to rants that would, depending on day, either belong on breitbart or buzzfeed.

To speak to this. I've spent the last 5 years working 9-10 hour days 6 days a week. Over this time i've pretty much been chain smoking cigarettes and weed, drink every night, spent a couple years doing some...uhhhh interesting things...while still working....nearly fucked my life up toally. My health's deteriorated a fair bit. I'm congested constantly and I've had a chronic sinus infection for years, my back's fairly fucked.

It's kinda caused me to break down a bit, I quit a couple weeks ago and moved. I've been working a job lately with less hours, but different demands that haven't really made things much better.

Hope you're able to change those habits, friend.

Well, it doesn’t serve the interest of those who are trying to make a living to buy the latest Jordan’s for 200$ a pair, live in the most happening part of the city where rent is a premium, and go out every week to the latest trendy restaurants. Of course my experience with my fellow 20 somethings are anecdotal, I believe We are doing this to ourselves. I can buy a house now in a very expensive part of the city and I’m 30. I saved, and most importantly invested, while others were lavish and spent. Yet they want the easy route?

My generation forgot what meant to live in moderation. All the drinking, poor diet from restaurant outings several nights out of the week is not good for health or the wallet which affects the former thing.

I have never ever, not once in my life, seen an investment advice in my country and schools, even when I tried.

Everybody is just like: "save some money, don't go to restaurants". Ace advice, all financial problems solved!

I'm 39 and I've almost literally broke my back working. Never had much time or motivation to look at the sides. So here's me, at 39, who still has no clue what does "invest your money" mean. Will you give me a few examples?

Same for diet, by the way. A lot of genetic advice is floating around but when you try to find a concrete set of rules, they are not there. My generation was never educated on diet. As far as I can see, the next ones aren't either.

"If You Can" by William Bernstein is a free, meant-to-be simple primer on investing aimed at Millennials:

https://www.etf.com/docs/IfYouCan.pdf

Appreciate the link but dude, this is not beginner material. I have zero idea what an "index fund" even is. I can learn it in an afternoon but then I'm not even sure my country has markets like that...

Index fund is just a bunch of stocks bundled together. You can buy small amounts of it, and you just ride the market as a whole, rather than some specific stocks you picked.

You can buy it at Vanguard.com. You’ll need to sign up for an account, and then it’s a process similar to setting up online bill pay.

If you can put a consistent amount into an index fund, even if it’s $50/month, religiously, that’s a huge step.

If you prefer a more basic starting point that links to definitions of the terms it's using, check out the Bogleheads introduction: https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Getting_started_for_non-US_i...

There are certainly online brokerages available in your country that offer index funds (either mutual funds or ETFs) like Interactive Brokers or Revolut.

Its a whole different field with its own lingo . Like learning a new programming language that seems difficult because it uses a crazy syntax you must read and research and discuss until you are comfortable working within it.

How I learned was through trial and error. I opened a brokerage account. Which now in my country is the easiest it’s ever been since there’s are 0$ fees for transactions. And just bought stocks at like 100$ or whatever I was comfortable to lose until I understood the basics of why something affected the price one way over another.

It’s not a science it’s more of an art and it’s own of those things that you need to put the effort in and someone can’t really explain to you until you do it.

Dilbert’s One Page Personal Finance List

• Make a will.

• Pay off your credit card balance.

• Get term life insurance if you have a family to support.

• Fund your company 401K to the maximum.

• Fund your IRA to the maximum.

• Buy a house if you want to live in a house and can afford it.

• Put six months’ expenses in a money market account.

• Take whatever is left over and invest it 70 percent in a stock index fund and 30 percent in a bond fund through any discount brokerage company and never touch it until retirement

• If any of this confuses you, or you have something special going on (retirement, college planning, tax issue), hire a fee-based financial planner, not one who charges you a percentage of your portfolio.

https://www.mattcutts.com/blog/scott-adams-financial-advice/

The economic arguments underline why the US aversion to nationalised healthcare is so counter-productive.

> Millennials are sicker due to the state of the economy and their job conditions caused by the economy

> This is bad for the economy

Sorry, but anybody who is still measuring things in terms of "the economy" needs to take a real hard look at themselves in the mirror, and ask why they care more about how many zeros are in their bank account, and less about fellow human beings.

I am all for the "free market", innovation, small businesses, careers, making a profit - but never at the expense of my health, my family's health, or the health of other people.

Your health, your family's health and the health of other people - all of that is related to the economy.

Usually when people say "bad for the economy" they mean bad for the bottom line. Sure, my health and the health of those around me does effect the economy, it effects how much money we have to spend on luxury items compared to health costs, or how much we get paid due to time taken off due to sickness etc.

And sometimes the well-being of loved ones means you are happy to sacrifice your own health. e.g. working a second job to pay medical bills for a loved one. People do it. But very rarely is the bottom line the prime motivator.

I think the point here is that if we are looking at the economy as the ultimate end and treating people as the means to that end, then we’re doing it wrong [1]. I get annoyed every single time I hear people justify the suffering of others as “good for the economy.”

Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never merely as a means to an end, but always at the same time as an end.

— Immanuel Kant, Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categorical_imperative#The_sec...

I think the culture of getting a loan for everything is part of what’s perpetuating the bad economy. You’re giving your money away to the bank to borrow their money while they sit back and do nothing to collect. A little patience and you can have that car or house without paying double the cost and then the banks don’t get your money and it incentivizes other parts of the economy that don’t involve lining the pockets of the already very rich.

I think that's true of a car but unless you live in an area that is not densely populated (and probably won't have much in the way of jobs), then the house part is not true, unless you're willing to live with your parents until you're at least 30.

> unless you're willing to live with your parents until you're at least 30.

Which is considered normal in many non-US cultures.

>You’re giving your money away to the bank to borrow their money while they sit back and do nothing to collect

Banks do not lend money, but instead newly create credit and money. See https://www.economicsnetwork.ac.uk/archive/starkey_banking

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_creation#Credit_theory_o...

>A study of banking software demonstrates that the bank does nothing else than adding an amount to the two accounts when they issue a loan. The observation that there appears to be no limit to the amount of credit money that banks can bring into circulation in this way has given rise to the often-heard expression that "Banks are creating money out of thin air".

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S105752191...

>This study establishes for the first time empirically that banks individually create money out of nothing.

>The observation that there appears to be no limit to the amount of credit money that banks can bring into circulation

That's not true, there is a limit on their minimum reserves or capital requirements depending on the location.

Citation ?

Banking laws and regulations. In most countries, banks are required to physically hold (i.e. not lend further) as a reserve a fraction of the money in their customers accounts. This is to provide liquidity, protect against bank runs etc.

So, If a customer A has $1000 in his account and the reserve rate is 10%, the bank can only lent $900 to some other person B. Then, in turn only 90% of that can be lent further. If you run this to the limit, for a 10% reserve rate, the amount of money that can be generated by banks is at most 10x the physical amount.

https://www.google.com/search?q=bank+deposit+reserves&oq=ban...

Currently 10% of deposits for big banks, ie more than $124MM in deposits.

While you are technically correct, in practice reserve requirements aren't the limiting factor in bank lending.

"minimum reserves..." In Eurozone, 1% of already issued credit. https://www.ecb.europa.eu/explainers/tell-me/html/minimum_re...

"or capital requirements" Basel Accords are a very complex system of ratios between bank capital (as a guarantee against bankruptcy) and bank credit (at risk of depreciation). The resulting ratio from these accords currently evolves between 0 and 9.5%. One important detail : Basel III is a "voluntary regulatory framework". A lovely oxymoron that means "you have to comply with this, if you want to." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basel_III

If only there was a way to distribute the cost of preventative care, so overall costs would decrease...

The most important forms of preventative care (diet and exercise) are basically free.

Alternatively, they require lots of effort and time, making them incredibly expensive

In most of the industrialized world, good diet and exercise are engineered out of lifestyles, especially for the poor. Grocery stores are dying, neighborhoods are becoming less walkable, and leisure time is increasingly filled with internet entertainment designed to be addictive.

Your comment makes no sense within a broader, practical framework.

> Advances [...] have resulted in an addictive but sedentary lifestyle that goes against human design, he said. It disrupts circadian rhythms, lowers exposure to sunshine’s vitamin D and alters how we eat.

You can say that again. I've been living a sedentary, indoors lifestyle my entire life (literally since I got a gameboy pocket at 5 years old) because I grew up in a place where I hated to be outside, but in the past 5 years or so I've come to observe that my mood, my alertness, and my general happiness takes a dive if I don't get enough time outside, even just to take a walk every now and then.

I moved to a new apartment that requires a solid 25 minute walk each direction every day as part of my commute, and I think that's helped a lot to help make things more regular. Winter time sucks because it's almost always dark outside, but still if I work from home for a day I can feel the difference in my body from not having my usual walk.

Even with freezing weather and unshoveled slush on the ground, I still wouldn't give up my daily walk for, say, a car ride. I know I don't have the discipline to stay healthy outside of what's necessary to get to work.

Why do you lack that discipline?

I don't know, but just speaking empirically I usually don't feel like doing things that are "productive" (side projects, working out, etc) after work

I'm sure there's ways to improve on motivation, but my point is that empirically I've struggled with that and on the other hand I get my daily commute "for free" in terms of motivation

Motivation is mostly bunk and tends to fall off quickly. It's more important to build discipline through good habits. Force yourself to exercise daily for a few weeks no matter how tired you are or how miserable it makes you. After a while it just becomes automatic and you stop having to think about it.

You might not feel like brushing your teeth every day but you still do it, right? Same thing.

At the risk of making myself seem untrainable, this doesn’t work for me. I can have a habit and break it by accident, but I always manage to say physically fit. This “motivation is mostly bunk” is about the worst advice you could give some like me. The main reason I stay fit is philosophical, or at least a remnant of my philosophy studies. Often the words of Socrates burn in my head; always a source of motivation. “No man has the right to be an amateur in the matter of physical training. It is a shame for a man to grow old without seeing the beauty and strength of which his body is capable.”

>hamper the economy.

what a bs bottom line

Try to remember when economic activity served human life instead of the other way around.

When

Well, originally economy referred to the maintenance of the household to the benefit of its members. That was circa Aristotle. Binary search from there?

After the renaissance but before the industrial revolution, perhaps.

No idea what this article is on about, I don’t know anyone in their 30s who works more slowly because of illness compared to people in 40s 50s. And is illness really worse or just more diagnosed?

It is really funny, everyone here seems to understand that stress at work is bad, and everyone is afraid of getting ill and costs of healthcare. But as soon as someone suggests a similar model that we have here in Europe(government-provided health care, more worker rights, more holidays), everybody loses their mind. People you are sacrificing your health for the owners of the company you are working for, and maybe some top managers.

This piece is less formal, but with more immediacy.

https://www.boredpanda.com/why-do-millennials-want-to-die/

Working more for less, ending up with more stress, eating genetically modified food, breathing in pollution, taking in constant radiation from wifi and cellular signals...the soft kill is working.

If making a persuasive argument to capitalists regarding government intervention in healthcare, I don’t see how it wouldn’t be advantageous to sell the programs as a way to improve their bottom line. If healthy people get the things they need to be productive, then they are productive and the business benefits. It’s as if these advocates don’t believe in the benefits of the programs they are selling. Do they not believe it will have appreciable effects for the greater economy?

Oh they sure do but i don't think "improve their bottom line" actually affects that many people comparatively and those who it does affect's wealth is relative and not that easily budged by the fact that people with more purchasing power being able to circulate more money, people with better overall health being more productive, etc is better for the economy. At least not if it has to come from their pocket in any way.

I would be curious to see these effects normalized to obesity. I suspect all trends of declining health (like sperm counts) are mostly this.

Not to imply that obesity isn’t driven by mostly the factors described by others here.

I don't know other millennials, but I am sick less than 2 days/year.

I'm vaccinated, no allergies.

Is this maybe related to Gen X Anti-Vaxxers?

Gen X were born before Millenials, so if it is vaccine related it is most probably just the opposite.

Having Anti-Vaxxers parents produces weak children (Millennials, Gen Z)

https://www.oatext.com/Pilot-comparative-study-on-the-health...

Please don't link to a fake science site.

http://flakyj.blogspot.com/2017/12/immense-pleasure-from-ope...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predatory_publishing

Reply on news.ycombinator.com