The Grinch Stealing the Future of Gen Y and Z
ineteconomics.org
ineteconomics.org
Big media sells fear. Social media amplifies rage. They both create a miasma of doom that isn't reflective of the upward trajectory we've been on and continue to ride.
The Boomer era economics were not the norm and comparing ourselves to them is a great deception. Postwar America was growing and factory to the entire world. That was unsustainable and the differential between the US and the rest of the world (especially developing economies in Asia) has diminished. We can't compare Boomer McMansions and low cost of infrastructure and development to our modern state in any sort of fairness. Our wages grew too much, and that's a good thing! (Automation will bring us right back to this recipe anyway, and we're getting there.)
Compare America today against the broader world history and you'll see that we're wealthy, growing, and improving by almost all measures.
I refuse to believe a future where me and all my community have a home and stable lives is unattainable, and anyone who tries to rationalize why we should be happy with scraps deserves their fate of a pitiful of indenture to Amazon
Material reality would be something measured in objective material benefits enjoyed.
Everything people read and consume today teaches them to feel things are worse because doomscrolling produces greater engagement.
It’s the same reason people feel “injured” (offended) by things that boomers in their day would find laughable.
It’s incredibly profitable to sell people their own discontent.
There isn't a way to transmute "stuff consumed" into enjoyment/utility/value. We can sort of guess that people who were near starvation but are now eating regularly are somehow doing better, but we are so incredibly far from that world that it's worth asking ourselves whether it is really the same thing at all to say people with more TVs in their homes are better off.
You're right about doomscrolling though. But there again, people are doing it more. It adds to GDP. Are people better off?
Averages might be going up, but they are averages: an attempt to boil down a large number of data points into a single number.
Sometimes social media can make things falsely exaggerated. But often, it just seems that way, when really it's just that more people are saying something in a more visible way. That's amplification, but not in the "false" sense.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/183648/average-size-of-h...
[1]: https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2018/08/homeownership...
If it was just a retirement trust fund it would be ludicrous for the government to handle it in the way they do.
There's no reason SS is age based and not means based
Honestly we should allow people to opt out entirely if they can demonstrate that they are adequately funding their own retirement/disability on their own plan.
Social Security as it exists now is a Ponzi scheme.
Only if younger generations disappear Children-of-Men style.
Political support for Social Security has always been based on the proposition that it is universal and that the benefit reflects contribution. While not required by law -- Social Security taxes are an ordinary income tax per the US Supreme Court -- this has been the explicit contract the government has made and reaffirmed repeatedly with the people for generations. It is an embedded part of the institution of Social Security.
Fundamentally changing the rules at this point would be viewed as a serious violation of trust between the people and the government, at a time when that trust is already at historic lows. Pragmatic politicians also understand that this would greatly erode support for Social Security taxes, since willingness to pay that 12.4% income surtax is strongly connected to the conception that this money will be returned to them in old age. Most politicians have the survival instinct to not even suggest this is not the case, legal technicalities aside.
It...is: the Old Age and Survivors Insurance Trust Fund and the Disability Insurance Trust Fund are separate funds that pay for different programs administered by Social Security.
> They are using the first as a justification to plunder the second
No, “they” (who?) aren’t.
> If it was just a retirement trust fund it would be ludicrous for the government to handle it in the way they do.
The OASI trust fund is, essentially, just a retirement trust fund, but it doesn’t seem like you have a clue how SS is run.
Maybe not, but then again, I've been working most of my adult life for an employer of the kind that can be exempt (but which is opted-in) from SS.
> Why can’t I defer my SS payments by paying an equal amount into my 401k?
You can't opt out of the defined-benefit safety-net retirement backstop by putting more money into a no-guaranteed-benefit personally-directed retirement plan because... of the whole point of having a backstop.
> If the purpose is to prevent society having to support elderly workers who failed to save anything that would also tick the box
No, it wouldn't.
Not only is money I am taxed for social security gonna get way shittier returns than a 401k, I am hesitant to believe social security will look the same way it does today when I am retirement age in ~35 years.
401k's do not have any guarantee, even in theory. You absolute should have some retirement plan outside of social security (which is, after all, just a backstop for that failing.)
> I am hesitant to believe social security will look the same way it does today when I am retirement age in ~35 years.
Well, I’m old enough that I've been hearing that refrain for more than 35 years, and have seen the math on the necessary changes to bring revenue and benefits in to line even if no action is taken before trustnfund exhaustion, and I haven't seen any sign that the radical damages some people try to use the threat of trust fund depletion to gain support for will become politically viable, so I am relatively confident that SS will remain in a recognizable form well into the future.
Imagine paying for car insurance and never seeing a dime back.
Some people win, mostly lower income widows that didn't pay in much. And then lived long past retirement. And then you have some single guy that dies in his early 60s.
Yeah, don't get me wrong. Taxes are taxes, and you just have to pay it. I have no problem with paying a tax to support elderly and disabled folks right now. But the thought of it still being solvent 30 years from now with the direction our country is heading is totally absurd. I fully expect the entire system to be gutted for our generation the moment a full Republican majority takes control.
Or if you insist on thinking in these "solvency" terms, then note that social security has never been "solvent". From day one, people who never "payed in" to the "account" received payments "from" it. That was possible for the same reason it is possible today for social security to pay out more than it brings in: it isn't its own account, its just one line item of spending coming out of the US treasury.
And there just is no political mechanism by which social security payments will fail to be appropriated. If some coalition gains enough control to pass and sign the legislation necessary to eliminate social security, they will be blamed for it by the electorate and will lose power for a generation. No political party wants to sign its own death warrant.
This all does assume the continued existence of the federal government as currently constituted, which is not a guarantee. So if what you're really saying is that you think the US system will collapse at some point before you retire, then that is actually more plausible, I think, than social security being eliminated by legislation under the current system.
But personally I also think it's very unlikely that the US system will collapse before I retire. It's just more likely than the wholesale elimination of social security :)
Keep in mind aging millenials will be a pretty enormous voting block and, given birth rates, we won't have the same large younger generation to balance us that we were to the Baby Boomers.
1. There does not appear to be a verb form of hyperstition
But you need to eradicate that mindset entirely. You should expect to collect social security. Period. And when this right comes under threat, you should fiercely defend it. Protest, unionize, become politically active. And as a starter, start showing up when there's something to vote on.
This lame attitude of "everything's shit and going to get worse, ah well" is absolutely ideal for those in power to strip you bare. Don't make it so easy for them.
I've only become less convinced over time of the likelihood that SS payments will stop at some point. There are various kinds of restructuring I could envision, but I really don't see any mechanism by which SS payments entirely stop without replacement. We would let the real value of the payments inflate away way before we'd legislate them away. There's just no political mechanism by which that legislation could be passed.
They're all retired and collecting social security now.
In reality it sits on the balance sheet just like everything else in the general fund. It "lends" money to the treasury by buying government debt (those SS payments funded all the highways and other infrastructure in the late 40s, 50s, and 60s0.
SS can't go bankrupt any more than the rest of the government could.
But they did…
It's still extremely low despite breaking records.
There is a reason why congressional approval ratings are at an all time low and re-elections rates are at an all-time high, at the same time.
No wonder voters, and not just young voters, feel hopeless.
Most of the wage growth in big cities goes straight into landlords' pockets. It's no way to run a civilization.
And at any rate, you can't even live the 60s life if you wanted to. It's either impossible or illegal.
If you want to stuff 4 people into two bedrooms with no A/C and never take vacations you can do it today in most cities in the US for the wage you'd earn at 1 corporate job. It won't be comfortable, but that isn't new.
If you want the boomer city experience, you need to go pick a city today that compares to a NYC, LA, Miami or SF in the 1960s and 1970s. Nothing like 2022 NYC, LA, Miami or SF existed in the 1960s and 1970s.
As someone who lives in a small town in the middle of nowhere, I'd argue that the well-paid jobs part is our biggest struggle. We might be somewhat unique compared to some other small towns, but we have a lot going on - theater, live music, civic groups, outdoor recreation, surprisingly good restaurants - there's plenty to do here, but there's also no question that our largest growing demographic group is people who made their money elsewhere. As both you and the poster below you comment though - neither the big city nor small towns offer much of a refuge for people these days; our system is squeezing every bit of "value" out of workers, to our detriment
Software is the best place to see this. Develop something niche and profitable. Without growth, you're just a feature and you will be ripped off by another party or a bigger player. Slack, Clubhouse, any Mac/iOS feature, etc. etc. Hundreds of examples here.
There's also the broader economic theory. If you can only invest time and money in one place, then you have opportunity costs and need to weigh the future outcomes of your investment choices. Life is finite, and you should use it in the best way you know how. For most people, money correlates strongly with value creation and reward. The amount of revenue you drive is also indicative of the broader value you've materialized for other people.
Housing can either be a good investment or affordable, but not both.
The percent of Americans living in urban areas has also grown over time.
Together we have more American competing for limited urban real estate.
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Percent-of-US-Population...
Post-war US had close to zero economical competition for a few decades. Which is exactly the time where your grandparents and parents spent most of their adult lives in. Middle class on easy mode, a simple job supports an entire family.
What changed is that the rest of the world caught up. Middle class on easy mode was a blip, not a permanent standard. What the west lost, the developing countries gained.
There's of course secondary factors too: different demographics (more workers, less elderly), women were not in the work force making labor more scarce, work was more stable and not constantly technically disrupted, etc.
It's complicated, but the idea that uneducated labor can support a middle class family is not coming back, ever.