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Comment by elhudy | Hacker News Reader

I question whether these generational comparisons are using the right statistics. In the very least they don't seem to paint a complete picture.

Maybe I am biased because I'm a very successful millennial. I have the world at my hands. Access to written knowledge from any point in the history of time. Tens of thousands of video games and movies available for under $10 and/or a small subscription price. I can learn the arts, pick up any hobby, or even teach myself to code for free. I can fly around the world and stay in hostels in other countries at the same price (or cheaper than) I pay rent in the US. If I run out of tp it is delivered to my doorstep the next day.

Sure, I make a lot of money and still can hardly afford a house. I graduated with more student loan debt than both my parents combined. They had different experiences in those regards. But I wouldn't trade my life in this millennial generation, for a life in the boomer generation, for anything.

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Interesting point. It's similar to how we consider inflation with regards to technological advancements. A cell phone still costs the same it did 10 years ago, but it's 5 times are fast now, so it actually got cheaper for that purpose.

The car you can buy today is many times better than any car you could've bought 50 years ago. Relatively, both you and your parents could buy a car, and they may have more money to spare than you would today. But they were definitely unable to buy a car that's anywhere near as good as what you can buy today.

It's one of the things that makes it hard to do meaningful standard of living comparisons over time. And it's especially easy to be dismissive of electronics etc. relative to the increase in prices of elite educations and homes in elite cities. And the cost of healthcare (although it's also much better in many respects).

However, I suspect a lot of people on the younger side would be pretty horrified at the level of communications, information access, ability to timeshift, and just the general friction of everything including payments, shopping, and more a few decades ago.

I've said it before only half-jokingly. If I were transported back to my late-eighties job as a product manager, I'd quit in shear frustration after a week or two because of the almost complete lack of information and communications tools.

Anyone transported to the past would be faced with the knowledge of what they have in this current era being compared to past situations. The main thing about people in the 80s is that they knew that what they had in the 80s was all there was. You likely can transport someone from 2100 into 2020 and they might be incredibly frustrated with the limitations of technology, communication, friction of social interactions, and so on.

As to the point of the person you're replying to, about cars and phones:

Those cars will also save many more people, which depending on the side you're on can mean that you're more likely to survive now or that there's much more "competition" likely to survive now.

Smartphones are better than the blackberries of a decade ago but they also shove social media down your throat in a way that had no equal before, which leads to significant impairments of mental health in younger generations.

There are many ways to look at the issue and we can almost endlessly zoom in and find discrepancies, but I wouldn't be surprised if a certain version of the central limit theorem ended up applying when comparing generations: the amount of seemingly random variables added up "even out" enough that the curves all end up looking like similar distributions, which can be compared.

You are biased due to that. There aren't that many high-paying jobs in the economy overall. Home ownership was usually the only tangible payoff for ordinary people.

https://danielmiessler.com/projects/reading/summary-the-war-...

Sure, but my high salary doesn't enable any of the things I mentioned. I'm still capable of making observations about the world around me; my friends, family, who have low salaries have access to these things and are seemingly able to achieve happiness through them.

I am NOT saying the article is wrong by any means, only that there are other considerations as well, which are always ignored in generational comparisons.

I think you have a strong disconnect with how impactful your high salary is on your quality of life. If someone has significant student loans and is driving for uber to make a living, I highly doubt they are traveling and staying in cheap hostels. And I highly doubt they have the time to indulge in the arts, work on hobbies, or teach themselves how to code because they are working 60+ hours a week to make ends meet.

And less extreme. I know plenty of professionals in the bay area who aren't in tech, making decent, but not great, salaries + benefits. For most of these folks, every expense needs to be scrutinized and home ownership is a pipe dream.

I think you're making incorrect assumptions about my "disconnect" and using that to validate your dismissal of my opinion that other variables are important when doing cross-generational comparisons.

Don't let the downvotes get you down. Your understanding of the opportunities in front of you coupled with a positive-can-do attitude is what the world needs right now.

There's ~0 reason for housing to get more expensive over time in countries where land is not scarce. It's an abject policy failure.

There's plenty of inexpensive housing out in the not scarce land. It's just that a lot of people (for various reasons) want to jam themselves onto islands and peninsulas where land is scarce.

Tokyo manages to have a huge population and low housing prices. It's not just the scarcity.

It's also the case that public policy can impact which areas are desirable, and whether more areas can be made desirable (for instance, by building usable mass transit).

Absolutely agreeable.

This is a fairly narrow view of the issue. For one, I think most people throughout history would refuse to trade places with previous generations, with maybe the main exception being those that were significantly impacted by war. And secondly, the article is focused on economic prospects of our generation, many of the ramifications of which will not play out for decades. Millennials are still relatively young. Being poor in your 20s is a lot different than being poor in your 60s.

A few other things to consider. The TP delivered to your house was done so by someone working a low paying gig work job. There is a good chance, that like you, they graduated with significant student load debt. How do you think they feel about their economic future? And in 30 years, what is social security and medicare going to look like? We are racking up major deficits to deal with the impact covid-19. Climate change is going to be an issue in our lifetime, and I strongly believe that if our generation does not tackle this issue, that it will significantly alter the course of humanity. And to add to all of this, we are already shifting towards populism in our politics. If that shift continues due to economic issues of subsequent generations, things will get weird.

>This is a fairly narrow view of the issue.

Actually, I'm taking a broader view of the issue.

>article is focused on economic prospects of our generation, many of the ramifications of which will not play out for decades

My response is not focused on the economic ($$) future of millennials. In fact, I am not even in disagreement that millennials are disadvantaged economically particularly when looking at CoL and debt.

I am pointing out that the article eschews the extreme compounding increases in technological advancements that my generation is fortunate to experience. Is that agreeable? Or would you say that when comparing generational success and/or happiness we should only consider variables where millennials lag?

> The TP delivered to your house was done so by someone working a low paying gig work job. There is a good chance, that like you, they graduated with significant student load debt. How do you think they feel about their economic future?

The same person who delivers my TP probably gets their tp delivered as well. Even though they are a blue collar worker, likely with debt. Isn't that value worth consideration when comparing generational wealth? How is that being accounted for in the article? If it isn't being accounted for, then why not?

I think you are greatly overestimating the impact of technology on peoples QOL. The HN crowd are likely to be heavy tech users, but your average person is not. The average person might get their video from Netflix instead of Cable TV now, and they might use social networking (which has its downsides) instead of phone lines, but they aren't playing MMOGs or taking MOOCs.

For example, in my own circle of hobbies. Fishing is getting worse[1]. Surfing is difficult because costal real estate is crazy expensive. Gardening is also difficult due to real estate, etc.. I can think of at least a dozen other activities that are now much harder to participate in due to rising real estate prices, climate change, or wealth inequality. For anyone who participates in these activities, there is a real loss in QOL.

Also, I think you are presenting a false dichotomy. Your suggestions is that millennials should be content because technological progress offsets the loss of economic opportunity. This is a false choice. We can have both with the right mix of policy. No one said to the boomers "You can have good economic opportunity, or you can have technological advancements, pick one". In their own lifetimes, they also saw huge advancements in medicine, infrastructure, communication, and tech.

[1] https://www.pressdemocrat.com/news/9058818-181/california-po...

>For example, in my own circle of hobbies. Fishing is getting worse[1]. Surfing is difficult because costal real estate is crazy expensive. Gardening is also difficult due to real estate, etc.. I can think of at least a dozen other activities that are now much harder to participate in due to rising real estate prices, climate change, or wealth inequality. For anyone who participates in these activities, there is a real loss in QOL.

You're using a ban on abalone fishing as an example of how hobbies are "becoming harder to participate in"? I'm sorry, but that's a massive generalization and a ridiculous stretch. The boom in technology over the past 30 years has undeniably enabled free learning, and while you can point at niche examples as outliers, you would be grasping at straws.

>Also, I think you are presenting a false dichotomy. Your suggestions is that millennials should be content because technological progress offsets the loss of economic opportunity. This is a false choice. We can have both with the right mix of policy. No one said to the boomers "You can have good economic opportunity, or you can have technological advancements, pick one". In their own lifetimes, they also saw huge advancements in medicine, infrastructure, communication, and tech.

Can you help me to understand how suggesting more variables be brought into the equation when comparing generational success is a false dichotomy? I think you're presenting a straw man. My comment was that I am content due to reasons not considered in the article, and that maybe those reasons should be considered when looking at the population as a whole and comparing them cross-generationally.

> My comment was that I am content due to reasons not considered in the article, and that maybe those reasons should be considered when looking at the population as a whole and comparing them cross-generationally.

You suggest adding more variables, and I recommended that we extend that beyond technology and then you summarily dismiss those concerns. Abalone is a very niche fishery, but my broader point was that our environment has been significantly degraded for a number of reasons, and for people who value the environment, whether it be for fishing, hiking, or whatever, they have experienced a loss relative to the generations before them. This also holds for anything that requires real estate. For example musicians are finding it much harder to make ends meet in cities due to loss of studio space and event venues. And even technology has not been a net win for everyone. Ask a journalist how they fell about the internet? How about your local bookstore?

I am glad you are content. Enjoy it. But recognize that you are literally one of the few winners in this economy. A highly paid tech worker has likely just experienced the best decade in history for their particular profession. But that is a very narrow segment of our society, and a large chunk of our generation has lost ground relative to their cross-generational peers.

>I am glad you are content. Enjoy it. But recognize that you are literally one of the few winners in this economy. A highly paid tech worker has likely just experienced the best decade in history for their particular profession. But that is a very narrow segment of our society, and a large chunk of our generation has lost ground relative to their cross-generational peers.

But I'm not the only winner. Society as a whole wins through advances in technology. That's my point, and that's what gives birth to the entrepreneurial spirit found here.

If you don't think so we can probably agree to disagree.

"I have the world at my hands. Access to written knowledge from any point in the history of time. Tens of thousands of video games and movies available for under $10 and/or a small subscription price. I can learn the arts, pick up any hobby, or even teach myself to code for free. I can fly around the world and stay in hostels in other countries at the same price (or cheaper than) I pay rent in the US. If I run out of tp it is delivered to my doorstep the next day."

Every other generation has all this now, too. But they also have houses and less debt.

>Every other generation has all this now, too. But they also have houses and less debt.

According to the graph, G.I.s had much higher economic output per population than boomers did, and experienced some of the same technological advancements towards the ends of their lives (fast cars, color television, even early PCs).

Would you rather have been born into the G.I. generation or the boomer generation?

Yes you are biased. The data shows it.

That's great you've been successful. However, since your story doesn't mirror the majority of your peers, consider yourself an outlier.

What can you do to help more people become as financially successful as you are?

The parent poster's point is that life has significantly improved in ways that aren't easily expressed through monetary value. If you lived in the 70s you could not have the convenience of a smartphone no matter how rich you were. People living in the 70s didn't have the ability to use a smartphone, use wikipedia, play video games, post on social media. You could've been the richest person that has ever lived and you wouldn't have been able to do what basically every teenager does in the US on a daily basis now.

My smartphone is in many ways a curse and a burden, but I need to carry it because I'm expected to answer phone calls within seconds no matter where I am, and text messages within minutes.

In the '90s, I could go out for a whole weekend and come home and check my answering machine and nobody would be offended, because that was the norm.

I could still opt to live like that now, but the repercussions would be much more severe, because the competitive landscape has shifted.

It's undoubtedly true that from an individual's perspective it can seem like a curse. However, what's important in discussions like this is the utility it provides to the population - how it makes people's lives and their economic activity more efficient. Better communication methods are obviously useful there.

I think you're missing his point. Although you can, of course, disagree with it in any case.

Even though people of relatively recent generations were more successful on average, that didn't give them access to many of the services and capabilities that people just take for granted today. Pick your year--1970, 1980, 1990. Plop many people down into those years and they would not be happy even if they had a good job and could buy a nice suburban house. (Middle class people were generally leaving the cities during that period.)

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