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Comment by georgespencer | Hacker News Reader

Excited for my second once in a lifetime economic correction!

I was born to a war, graduated to the 2008 recession, and now it's 2020. Still, excluding my parents generation, I consider myself very lucky.

Ah ha I have another event, I graduated in 2002 right into the dot-com bubble burst, with its mass unemployment in software development. That was a hard time as a grad, competing against massive amounts of experienced professionals with a massively reduced job market then with a follow up 2008 recession and now a 2020 recession.

Millennials keep getting fucked.

Counterpoint I don't have a particular attachment to, but think about often: Millennials are a touchy feely hopes and dreams generation, and things were just as bad in different areas for boomers, but boomers were raised by people who had the attitude of "We're lucky to be alive!"

I think boomers had it easier economically. For example one person (usually the man) could support a whole family with one pay check back in the days (including owning a home, sending kids to college etc). That can very rarely be done nowadays. Also unions are mostly a thing of the past - so you have a whole new class of people who have very precarious existence, going from one temp job to the next (I recommend watching Guy Standing's talk 'The Precariat'). Many of our parents worked for the same company from their 20s to retirement - how many of us will be able to do that? Hell - how many of us will even work in the same profession from 20s to retirement?

I think if you gave the generations born from 1914 through the late sixties / early seventies the choice between the existential threats they lived through in that period and the perceived economic hardship younger generations suffer today, they would pick economic hardship every single time.

Most western countries have also had a huge rise in living standards during the same time period meaning that the conception of 'economic hardship' is very different today to the post-war depression.

Sorry I see my comment was misleading , I meant baby boomers (born after 45+). I think a lot of millennials feel like their parents are better off than they will be.

Gotcha! Thanks for the replies. A really interesting area and very hard to quantify overall either way. I find that usually when people frame it in the terms I did, most people (not you because you seem very considerate already!) think about the post-war pre-70s generations in more kindhearted terms.

Now all I said doesn't mean life was perfect back then, you had wars, racism, chauvinism etc etc. Being a woman is certainly better today than it was then. But if you judge purely by economics and life stability - they had it better.

> life stability

Anyone born 1914 through 1945 experienced either one or two wars plus the post-war depression.

Anyone born 1952 through to the early seventies lived under the cloud of imminent nuclear holocaust (read interviews with those who lived in those times -- especially those with first-hand knowledge of the Cuban missile crisis -- and you'll realise just how certain people felt that they were going to be annihilated).

I think the mid-seventies onwards are the earliest you can say that people have had a sense of existential stability.

1) We also live under the cloud of nuclear holocaust, it's a bit less likely now but not 100% unlikely. We also have climate change and AI now which they didn't. 2) I was referring to baby boomers, so 1945 and after. Obviously people before that lived through unimaginable horrors as u said. And many of our parents were raised by traumatised parents, I'm not denying that.

The seventies were pretty tumultuous in the UK - The Troubles, Winter of Discontent and then eventually the Falklands War in the early 80s

Absolutely agreed, but totally convinced that all of those pale by comparison of the existential threat which humanity as a whole experienced prior to that.

Yeah I just hope and pray that this century doesn't turn out like the early-to-mid 20th century.

What a time to be alive!

Out of curiosity, why are you excited about this?

2009 happened.

The 2008 recession was considered a "once-in-a-lifetime" event. it's ironic that we're now experiencing a second.

I imagine op is referring to 08-09 which was touted as the biggest economic crash since The Depression.

Maybe they want to "buy the dip" and bet on a recovery. Or maybe they've been shorting UK Plc somehow :-)

Sorry, I was being facetious: my second once in a lifetime economic correction :)

Only second?

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