Most Americans Doubt Their Children Will Be Better Off
wsj.com
wsj.com
I think for me, one insight is that of my friends making over $100,000 lack the real awareness of what it means for my friends who make just enough to pay rent and food, while struggling to provide the life they want for their kids.
We ( I have been guilty of it) sometimes reduce the conversation to some version of "just re-tool" as if they are 10 weeks away from a different life. There are so many steps that I used to take for granted. Mindset is one of them. Different priorities is another major issue. I have a friend that could have worked on a cutting edge robotics team that stayed home and took a help desk job so he could live with his mom that is 88 years old and struggles to walk.
The hopelessness of many hard working and smart people is not very appreciated. They are not dumb or lacking discipline or some variation of that.
There is a real economic issue. Take school teachers or nurses (my wife's a nurse) that truly aren't paid adequately for their contribution.
is there fault they chose wrong at 18? That just seems too simple of an answer to me.
A big one that people overlook is an individual's ability to recover from a failed attempt.
People who have strong family ties, wealthy families, or other strong support groups, can rebound much more easily than those without.
A lot of people would be better off of they "re-tooled" as you called it. But they literally cannot afford the risk of trying something new in case it doesn't work out.
So many people take for granted their safety nets.
Or to even afford the re-tool. I have a friend who's struggled to find a job for the last few years in the greater LA region; their background is in acting and they don't have a lot of experience in anything to meet the barrier for entry for most decent-if-low-paying white collar work, and they're already underwater in a bunch of ways so they literally can't afford the cost of any training that would open up other opportunities.
I've thought a lot recently about how crap the US is in providing "second tries" in general, and it honestly really scares me. My wife and I are fortunate in that our "first choice" of what to specialize in when we were 18 were things in relatively high demand with decent compensation. (My wife would scoff at this; I work in tech, she's in the veterinary field, and our pay disparity is staggering.) But suppose someone (like my friend) didn't do that, and they made the maybe-reasonable assumption they'd be able to scrape by doing crap work until something better came along? Then comes a pandemic, then comes an insane labor market, then comes spiking inflation and CoL--now they've exhausted their reserves (which, statistically, most Americans have effectively no reserves [1]), their outlook remains bleak, but their back is to the wall.
Yet, the "bootstrap" mentality is what so many people seem to reference when confronted with situations like this; the single parent who went to night classes for months to become an RN, or the janitor that worked their way up to being a department head. These stories abound in the American zeitgeist, but I think it's just an extension of the "just world" fallacy.
[1]: https://www.fool.com/the-ascent/personal-finance/articles/47...
I put "cannot afford to try" and "too risky to try" in basically the same bucket, but it's important to note that there is an actual material difference.
The bootstrap mentality is where that difference lies, honestly.
People who can afford to take the risk can sometimes win big and get held up as prime examples of the American Dream survivorship bias in action.
We tend to overlook the ones that fail and are ruined forever. Or the fact that many only did it because risk wasn't very big due to their personal safety nets.
And we absolutely overlook the ones who can't even dream of attempting in the first place because they are too busy just trying to survive.
> have a friend that could have worked on a cutting edge robotics team that stayed home and took a help desk job so he could live with his mom that is 88 years old and struggles to walk.
This is also pretty common. The US healthcare system could help here if it weren't an arbitrarily cruel profit center for billionaires. We need a real social safety net in this country.
Indeed, but the economy is considerably worse now than it was and how observant one is does not seem to be determined by nurture.
The teachers I had in elementary school in central NJ in the 1990s could all afford to lead pretty normal middle class lifestyles. I wouldn't say that they were thriving, but they certainly weren't just barely making ends meet.
I wouldn't think less of a classmate of mine from that time if they went into teaching as a profession thinking it would now provide what it provided then.
I live in a smallish town in a rural county. There's a couple healthy manufacturers, so not really in a decline. Nurses here earn above the national median household income. The lowest paid might be a bit below.
I don't (and won't) have kids, but if I did, I think they'd definitely be worse off. Between stagnant wages, corporations buying all the housing stock and constantly rising rents, yeah...they're basically fucked. The threshold for being able to buy a house has gotten ridiculous.
The 638 sq ft 1-bedroom apartment I lived in in 2011 for $650/month is now $1,600/month. The 900 sq ft 2-bedroom I lived in in 2015 for $900/month is now a whopping $2,200/month. That's absolutely bonkers.
My hope (which is not guaranteed) is that in the next 20 years or so we start to solve our housing woes.
While it might not seem like we’re making a ton of progress (especially on zoning and such), a lot can change in 2 decades. Additionally we can expect the largest generation will start passing away and birth rates likely continue to drop so subsequent generations will demand less and less housing.
Real estate investment is an utter cancer. A blight on our society that contributes to keeping poor people poor.
But the people with the money have the power. They prevent new housing from being built. If it gets built anyways, they buy it up and rent it out, sucking more money from the people that aren't fortunate enough to be able to save 6 figures to make a down payment.
Some cities are of course wildly out of wack with that.
For a species, sure.
For an individual, absolutely not. Personally, I'd just say "happiness" is the measure of success, with "happiness" having a definition that varies from individual to individual.
If something you can achieve purely by accident is something that counts as success, then you have a strange idea of what counts as success.
And heritage?
Please.
Over 99.99% of the world population is completely unremarkable, will not be in any history books or Wikipedia articles, and will be forgotten within a couple generations by everyone except maybe a couple relatives.
Heritage. Hah. You're a funny dude.
> Over 99.99% of the world population is completely unremarkable
They are the survivors of more than a billion years of incessant struggle. They are genetically the absolute elite of all elites, including you. That is incredibly remarkable. You carry that heritage and honour in your genes, and shouldn't throw it away just because the rulers have learned how to hack the human brain using mass media and schooling.
When the rulers say pay taxes and pay mortgage, that is unnatural and diseased. When your body and spirit says have sex and procreate, that is natural and healthy. "Unintended pregnancies" is the body and subconscious taking control, because the genetical programming of the human being to survive is superior to the mind programming of the rulers. And always will be.
Have a good day.
American optimism is a trademark feature of being American and being in America. We must retain and encourage relentless optimism in American innovation and American capabilities and the American spirit. It is this spirit that emboldens NATO and all nations and peoples loving free exchange, free education, free upwards momentum for the motivated, and freedom for the brave and the bold.
And we try to lift up all boats as the tide rises higher for us, and we demonstrate this over a very long track record now. Don't fall victim to authoritarian bullshit or fear mongering or gas lighting or astro turfing or internet psyops from abroad.
The United States is poised for significant continued growth and innovation.
It is possible we will turn away from the dark path. But I don't see how. Dem politicians don't want to use their power. GOP politicians only want to use power to further enrich the already obscenely wealthy and allow every other segment of society to be forced into religious cults. COVID has made us all stupider and less healthy.
"Trump’s base is made up of Republicans whose households pull in less than $50,000 a year. He led this group of voters by 22 points over DeSantis in our CNN poll. He trailed DeSantis by 13 points among those GOP voters making at least $50,000 a year. This is a 35 point swing between these two income brackets."
Note, too, Trump's clear lead among GOP voters of color.
"Trump was up an average of 55% to 26% over DeSantis among Republican (and Republican leaning independent) voters of color in an average of the two polls."
The anti-Trump press has generally not come to terms with his followers more likely to be working class and persons of color.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/19/politics/trump-voters-of-colo...
Optimism is a trademark feature of a population untouched by traumas of war or famine (how many wars were fought on American soil? Would you say American military veterans are an optimistic bunch?).
Otherwise it's an individually variable characteristic.
There is no boot crushing this face or jaw. Everyone is working together to win together across the entire United States. It is cheap online astro turfing and gas lighting and psy ops bullshit that would suggest otherwise. The data shows that the long-term view of the American narrative is intact and stronger than ever.
It is individually variable because we are talking about hundreds of millions of individuals. But it is universally applicable, across the United States, because it's built into the basic charter of the country (the Constitution) and has also been taught to the children for decades still. We may be experiencing a slight negative blip in the road by confronting a lot of negativity and toxicity and psy ops online for now, but the reliable data and the verifiable real-world experience across the United States on this front resolutely demonstrate that American Optimism is truly a value that continues to exist and fuel the next batch of massive innovation in products and services boosting everyone including the lowest classes.
The real value that matters here is how far individual wealth goes. For example, what is the average square foot dwelling area that an American has access to now versus what was considered reasonable and find in their parental generation or grandparental generation or even further back just 100 years ago?
Answer: People now have much higher standards of a basic standard of living even if the shares or if the currency amounts and ratios may differ. This is the true North Star in assessing whether or not wealth is meaningfully being distributed and allocated.
Diligent and disciplined individuals are able to channel hope and idealistic energy into massive positive material changes in the United States.
Even if the majority of work as we know it now becomes automated, that will unlock a universal basic income that elevates all people to the status of being a diligent researcher, scientist, engineer, or college student in training towards one of these directions as everyone gets massively boosted because of ChatGPT and other tools and friends like that coming online. The end result of this boosting is a generous universal basic income that makes ancient the concept of needing to work for a "living."
Instead people will work to continue the next wave of innovation in products and services across all industries, and in commodity extraction and acquisition even from celestial bodies. Mining operations are already being spun up. 3d printed rockets are being tested in flight.
What this means is that momentarily human beings will have entirely new classes of work opportunity that are more badass and interesting than anything before it.
Expect astronaut openings by the millons.
But we also recognize we basically won the career lottery (tech, biotech).
I highly doubt my kids will be better off financially. But finances are just one aspect of life and I hope I can set them up to be happy, healthy, and enriched.
I know this is a joke, but that can't be right: the rulers will continue to need a working class to support their lifestyle. If birth rates collapse and the music stops, a whole lotta everyone is gonna be without chairs, not just the working folk.
The only reason for a general decrease in quality of life is because the rulers have determined that the population is more easily controlled the less freedom they have. There is no investment that pays better than investing in the poverty of others.
Instead, I'm just hoping for a more realistic "happy & healthy".
That is wealth. That guarantees wealth over time if basic mathematical principles pertaining to living on less than you make and investing into compounding streams are adhered to over time.
Another way to look at it is home ownership becoming more of a pipe dream for newer generations. More investment will be needed in order to participate and reap from the housing market. This is over a basic human need of shelter.
Home ownership is an easy problem to solve. We need to build more property and develop and redevelop existing properties. We need more investors, more builders, more construction, more new shopping malls, more infrastructure spending, larger infrastructure products. We can print fiat to fuel this because it's tied to real economic gains and the increased movement of all commodities.
It is not a choice between treating real estate as investment vs a basic human need of shelter. When you properly allow supply to meet demand by getting out of the way of construction and investment and business to build the products (the houses), the supply will rise to meet the demand. Some places have artificial blockers on the ability of supply to rise to meet demand.
Most of the United States does not have this problem because of how giant a landmass it is and how much open space there is to continually develop, redevelop, and reforst over the coming thousand years.
Discipline is essential, yes, but equally as essential is just plain getting lucky.
This will become much more apparent and visible with ChatGPT fueling everyone and boosting those who are diligent, disciplined, focused, and in love with their craft(s).
There won't be any more of these excuses around luck for long.
I don't see how the likes of ChatGPT can possibly change that reality. But I suppose that we will see!
If you cannot see the results ChatGPT will bring to the human species, then you are not able to see clearly at all, let alone to render judgment on the nature of the United States and how hard work and future-thinking play into success and how luck does and what luck is.
Luck is just when preparation meets (endlessly abounding) opportunities. America is the Land of Opportunity. You can come at me with the luck talk when opportunities dwindle and when the majority of the species is not stagnating by not making the most of what it already has.
I suggest you go look at the objective long-term data and stop letting negative spin from click-driven media and politicians trying to drive their various agendas rob you of reality.
It's because I'm thinking about my children's well-being. That's near-term, local stuff. That the long-term global trend is going up doesn't mean the short-term local trend is also going up.
Also, I'm comparing my children's standard of living to my own. I'm not comparing my children's standard of living to that of past eras.
> stop letting negative spin from click-driven media and politicians
You're assuming quite a lot about about me here.
If every segment of society would agree that they rate as "reasonably happy/satisfied" then I'd agree that your assumed standards actually mean something, but that's just not the case. And we don't have great historical satisfaction data to compare with.
Both are useful to measure.