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Comment by nebula8804 | Hacker News Reader

I hear this line of reasoning constantly from people who have had the system work for them. What they don't realize is that there is a huge portion of this country where the system is not working and thats where this discontent is coming from.

Their misinformation campaigns wouldn't work if there weren't real core issues with the society. The internet has empowered a generation the sees whats behind the curtain.

AOC said it best: Millennials have seen a situation where 9/11 happened in Middle School, the GFC happened in college and now the covid disaster has screwed hoards of millennials once again when they are trying to purchase a home and get on their feet. Majority of millennials have never seen a time of economic prosperity in their lifetimes. It is the complete opposite to what their parents experienced. With this reality is it any wonder where there is massive discontent that results in this division? The system has failed them.

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>Majority of millennials have never seen a time of economic prosperity in their lifetimes. It is the complete opposite to what their parents experienced.

This exaggerated view is unfortunately quite common. It completely ignores the crises that previous generations had to go through, from WWII and the Korean War, to Vietnam, to depopulation of rural areas, to the Oil Crisis, to massive pollution in modern cities, to the mass lay-off of industrial workers starting in the 1980s, to inflation rates of 15-20%, etc, etc.

Oh wow this comment is packed with so many unrelated events spanning multiple generations. You fail to see that going into the 70s and 80s the societal structure shifted to a far conservative view in terms of taxation, regulation and other governmental actions. This leads to a direct correlation to the outcomes for Gen X, Y and Z which have had their upbringing in the decades since post-Nixon.

If you look at the raw numbers of how Boomers prospered in their life cycle and compare it to the trajectory of Millennials it tells a clear and jarring picture. Even more so for Gen Z which explain why they are eschewing capitalism at far greater numbers than Millennials ever did. Note: all of my comments applies to a lesser extent to GenX as well but AOC was referencing Millennials since she is one. The point is if you look at the trajectory from Gen X onwards it paints a picture of decline in most aspects of life.

WWII is really the Silent + Greatest Generation and does not excuse the decline that started after Boomers.

>so many unrelated events spanning multiple generations.

That's the point; the world has always been turning. In terms of post-WWII economic history, the current "crisis" in the west is neither special nor very great.

This academic view of things does not matter to the people who are living a reality where their parents have done better than them. You seem to be ignoring this fact.

Plenty of people are living a reality where they're doing better than their parents. I should think that includes a lot of the well-paid software industry readership of HN.

The majority aren't.

Repeating my previous comment:

You can pluck a small group from any generation and show that they are doing better. How is the cohort as a whole doing?

It appears that you are set in your ways and are not willing to actually look at how Gen Y and Gen Z are doing in reality. Every answer you have given is an excuse to lay blame on the millennials as if the majority of the generation made some critical mistake in their lives.

You are just too out of touch to reason with.

Yes, the challenges faced by Millenials are different from those faced by their parents. But I don't think they are harder than those faced by previous generations.

Yes, but those "previous generations" had oxygen in the tank, as in financial assets stored away from the good times, to survive the bad times. Millenials go pearl diving.

Try telling that to all those laid off in the 1980's, or those who had to abandon family farms in the 1960's and 1970's, etc, etc.

Ordinarily it is the older generation that looks to the past with rose-tinted spectacles. Millenials must be one of the few times when it is the younger generation that does so.

If you look at the arc of the whole generation and compare it to subsequent generations, overall the Boomers ended up much better off than their successors at the same point in time. Time is running out for Millenials to catch up. The oldest part of the cohort are in their 40s now so its looking as if they will end up poorer compared to their parents.

Poor people in the fifties did not have any financial assets.

Okay, so, what’s your point? There’s always some crisis in history. You’re moving the goalposts to weird places and leaving out all the boom times in the time periods you mention. Doesn’t seem like a good faith argument to me

Also, the Korean and Vietnamese wars were about fighting communism and imposing Western democracy on the East

Millennials also have high speed internet, smartphones, and video games to tune out local life that previous generations lacked.

Did previous generations have the same regulations in place that cause companies to restrict employment in crappy jobs to less than 40 hours a week so you need to move between job sites or work unsteady 'gig' jobs on the side? To avoid some mandatory benefits?

Previous generations had significantly higher tax rates for the ultra-wealthy and had wages that were in line with inflation. Those wages have stagnated for decades and all those taxes have been pulled back. All of this started to happen around the time of Gen X onwards.

In exchange we have cheap Chinese produced crap that shows the mirage of wealth but in reality there are external costs to all this tech that is not priced in when you go to pay for it. Costs such as the slave wages paid to the people who produce them and the environmental cost to produce and dispose. If US consumers had to pay the true cost of all these toys then it would expose the wage gap much more clearly.

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