Gen X emerging from pandemic with firmer grip on America's wallet
reuters.com
reuters.com
The numbers that we _should_ be looking at is not how much they have vs how many they are (ie the wealth per capita) but wealth per capita at different stages in their life vs same stages in other generation's lives. Compare how much wealth per capita boomers had in their mid twienties, mid thirdies, etc compared to younger generation. I feel those comparisons are much more fair and telling (and yes, AFAIK, there is a discrepancy that makes it seem unfair).
The "news" is that Gen X is joining the other groups, pulling away from Millennials.
So, thanks, Gen X. You did good.
From semiconductors to the internet, thanks folks. I have many mentors from this generation and I find a common thread of extreme discipline and rigor in their work - this is largely lost in my own generation (millenial).
Transfer of knowledge needs to be from prev to next gen. Unlike tutorials on YT teaching horrible practices, which is exactly the opposite. Experienced people from Gen X doesn't have the time, motivation, etc to go on YT with full blast click bait tutorials and compete with user engagement tactics. They write books. They're better than edu-entertainment IMO.
Gen x didn't have all the advantages of great economy like baby boomers, but we still had it better than today. My college total cost was something like $5k. I went to grad school and had multiple job offers at each stages.
The world hasn't changed, our reach has. And we're abusing that power.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss%E2%80%93Howe_generatio...
You actually could argue that new generations are worse because we're lazier, hedonists, more disrespectful, etc or you could argue that boomers and gen x are actually the bad ones that left everything in such a bad state that following generations spent decades to make everything right again.
>because we're lazier, hedonists, more disrespectful, etc
Also, "they" said the same stuff about GenX.
None of this is true
The internet? Our parents and grandparents did that.
I'm pretty sure we get to take credit for cat memes, though.
Facebook was create by a Millennial though, just sayin'.
This nihilism does no one any favors of course. I just think we're no where near a breaking point for any of it to change significantly.
Newer generations lucked out because they learned early that boomers will only help themselves and the only chance they have for social mobility is to gamble their way into wealth. Lucky for them, they'll get to live out their life being served coffee by some of the smartest, most well educated baristas the world has ever seen.
We are a small cohort and I sometimes wonder if we are less slackers than just preemptively traumatized, waiting for the other shoe to drop like a neutron bomb, The Road Warrior as training for those who wish to survive, holding our collective breath waiting for the apocalypse to finally show up.
What a puny plan.
They got the best of a lot of things. (Very anecdotal)
* Excellent Music - Top tier Rock and Rap
* Moderate on Politics - Saw the evils of Communism, but don't have the rosy eyed image of Capitalism as 2008/2000 hit them at critical ages (20-30) in their lives.
* Less involved in identity politics - Went to college before campus activism was based around identity.
* Understanding of the Millenial's struggles, cautiously liberal, and stuck in a terrible housing market because Boomers refuse to die.
Sadly, The Boomer's stranglehold over politics has affected them the most. This is most evident in this [1] graph, where the GenX wave clearly never came and Millenials are already nipping at their heels with Jon Ossof in the senate. This is visible in in presidential runs too. Obama, McCain, Trump, Bernie, Warren, Kamala and Biden are all Boomers or older. Yang and Pete came closest, which is still embarrassingly far for a generation at the top of the Presidential age bell curve [2].
[1] https://flowingdata.com/2021/02/01/age-generations-in-the-u-...
[2] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bf/Age_dist...
The early 90s was a terrible recession where I was. It went along with the drab grunge music and the floppy fashions. There were no cranes on the skyline, and minimum wage was the deal, if you could get a job after high school at all. A pretty bleak time.
(It wasn't until the mid-90s that things picked up and then it went from all that plaid and grey and "I'd be really angry but even that is too much work" to the hayday of late 90s rave culture and total excess)
I was very politically active and radical, but I was definitely in a minority.
It's going to be one of the largest, albeit gradual, generational transfers of wealth in history. I'm very curious to see how all that wealth in Gen X and Millennial hands will be put to use.
Coming out of the pandemic, Boomers, Gen X and Millenials all have a firmer grip on America's wallet, coming at the expense of the silent & earlier generation who saw their households drop :(, but still, the Boomers' grip is tighter than others', which I think is the real lede, if any.
In all honesty, you could read this as members of the Silent generation are dying and they're bequeathing their wealth to Boomers and Gen X... I guess Millenials have to hope they'll be so lucky when Boomers die.
> you could read this as members of the Silent generation are dying and they're bequeathing their wealth to Boomers and Gen X
How could you read it any differently?
> I guess Millenials have to hope they'll be so lucky when Boomers die.
What's there to hope? Where else is the Boomers' wealth supposed to go when they die?
...just like the Boomers.
And, in a couple decades, the same line, with different parts under the ellipsis, will be written about Millennials.
Because record (if you adopt the right measure) stock market booms happen frequently enough, and named age cohorts are broad enough, and them becoming more financially dominant as they hit their prime earning years certain enough, that you can pretty much guarantee the opportunity to apply this frame.
It's “news” the way “the sun rose in the East today”, and it's connection to whatever else is going on and which gets reported with it as if it were particularly relevant is nearly as tenuous as if those things were being attributed as relevant to the sunrise.