I'm an 'elder millennial' and I'm so used to seeing articles about how my generation has been screwed that I have to remind myself I'm not 'young' anymore and we're now talking about a whole new generation that's starting behind the 8 ball.
Hidden in those statistics are also some burgeoning equity issues which are only beginning to show their face with GenZ.
Millennial home ownership rates are a bit behind, but not by a crazy amount for example.
Boomers need to retire already, because they've held onto the top rung of the ladder for far too long, which has caused severe ripple effects in our economy. Their mentality, while not inherently bad, has not kept up with reality.
I personally have struggled and am extremely fortunate that I've had great parents who were wealthy enough to partially support me. I wasn't able to get into a good company after college and that has absolutely wrecked my career - taking odd jobs and short-term employment to put food on the table and pay rent. As I'm not an engineer, my career prospects are quite dim.
Now that there's an entire new generation entering the workforce, I'm afraid that there's millions of people in my position who simply won't be able to afford anything, much less a home or a family. That's not good for the economy, but the folks at the top don't really care as long as they get paid.
Boomers will just leave their wealth to their kids, so if you don't have well off parents, you'll still find yourself underneath the ladder, holding the short stick, at the upcoming generational wealth transfer. We need more inheritance taxes, at least in Europe, which at his point is a feudal state from this tax-free inter generational wealth transfers in some parts.
All sorts of racism and prejudice are at much lower levels than when I was a kid.
I went through two economic crises by the time I was 21.
The US fought two wars in my prime war fighting years. (Though fortunately not me but friends died).
Technology has continued it's steady march.
If you gave me a choice between being born today and being born when I was I'd take today without hesitation. Things haven't become Utopian yet but they are steadily getting better.
Yes I know. This happened because they graduated into the face of one of the recessions. Or maybe they went to war and lost their 20s battling PTSD. These effects persist for a long time which is why a lot of my generation was left behind.
Obviously can't predict the future, but for those that came of age post 2008 the economy has been remarkably resilient. They haven't experienced something like a chunk of engineering graduates that can't get jobs. I was lucky and made it out, but the average starting salary of my degree from my school went down significantly because of 2008.
A graduate today has no living memory of what an economic recession in the US looks like. And if anyone is wondering it's a lot worse than today or what happened during Covid.
Easy: as an engineer, my father in his late 30's could support my mother being a SAHM, three kids, buy a 120m² (IIRC?) small house with a garden, and all the modern commodities (well, safe for electronics that didn't exist at the time).
Nowadays, I'm also an engineer in my mid 30's, and I can just buy a 40m² flat. Never talk about kids.
The houses I grew up in are more affordable today then they were when my parents bought them. Inflation adjusted price is about the same but interest rates were far higher.
Criminality rates are roughly stables since the 80's (https://www.alternatives-economiques.fr/sites/default/files/...), French cities in the 80's were definitely not ‶crack-induced hellscapes″ (and if they ever were, it's definitely now, just visit Paris or Marseille by night), and safe for pollution, I don't think they were notably worst or better to live in than now.
Wayyyyyyyyyyyyy better. My parents entered the work force at the tail end of stagflation. They got to pay 18% on their first mortgage in an economy with twice the unemployment of today.
That and since we (for the most part) don't count cohabitating women as whores or birth control a sin means I was much more experienced in relationships than my parents were when they had me. My kid is getting a far more stable environment than I did. And I in turn had a more stable childhood than they did because I wasn't raised by WWII vets that coped with PTSD by drinking.
And all that doesn't touch on things like if my kid were Gay, transexual, black/brown, had a mental illness, had a disability, or any number of other things society has become much more enlightened on. Or the cleanliness of the air they're breathing, the lack of lead in our paint, and so on.
In which country were your parent born so that was the case 30-50 years ago?
The teen suicide rate has increased 35% since 1999. [0]
Also, baby formula shortages are now a routine thing here; this would have been unthinkable for Americans 30 years ago for a non third-world country.
>The US fought two wars in my prime war fighting years. (Though fortunately not me but friends died).
And is now entirely reliant on the use of foreign proxies because its will to fight is exhausted (for better or worse).
[0] https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/08/health/us-suicide-rate-trnd/i...
+ Significantly more income inequality than 20+ years ago
+ Stagnated wages relative to inflation for much more than 20+ years
+ Economic mobility is significantly worse
+ The education system is in worse shape than 20+ years ago
+ Higher education is more costly, and no longer improves prospects of gainful employment nor additional earning potential
+ Health insurance costs that significantly outpace inflation
+ Kids today will be living under a surveillance state from day 1
Yes, technology has advanced, and some social issues have made progress, but others have had significant setbacks (rollback of Roe v Wade, uptick in far right ideologies).
This is slightly true. Gini index when I was born was 38ish and now it's 40ish. So slightly worse but also because the rich have gotten richer. Not because the poor have gotten poorer in an absolute sense.
>+ Stagnated wages relative to inflation for much more than 20+ years
That's an odd way to say things aren't different from what they were 20 years ago.
>+ Economic mobility is significantly worse
I don't think that is true. Do you have a cite.
Addressing one more:
>Health insurance costs that significantly outpace inflation
Anyone talking about health insurance is just not remembering how it was. If words like "HMO" and "pre-existing condition" and "Lifetime maximum" don't send shivers down your spine then you're not correctly remembering how terrible it was. For all the flaws the US health care system has it's simply miles ahead of what it was pre-Obamacare.
>I don't think that is true. Do you have a cite.
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2022/06/29/stuck-on-...
There's also studies out there that show where you were born/raised can have a significant impact on mobility
>>+ Stagnated wages relative to inflation for much more than 20+ years
>That's an odd way to say things aren't different from what they were 20 years ago.
That's not what I'm saying at all. I'm saying that wages have gone up at a lower rate than inflation, therefore leaving the majority of the working class with less buying power than they used to have.
>>+ Significantly more income inequality than 20+ years ago
>This is slightly true. Gini index when I was born was 38ish and now it's 40ish. So slightly worse but also because the rich have gotten richer. Not because the poor have gotten poorer in an absolute sense.
I think there's more than just the Gini index. Here's an interesting chart that shows the slight rise in Gini that you referenced, but combined with other measures that factor into income inequality. The data is only until 2015, but I doubt it's gotten any better since then.
https://www.chartbookofeconomicinequality.com/inequality-by-...
>>Health insurance costs that significantly outpace inflation
>Anyone talking about health insurance is just not remembering how it was. If words like "HMO" and "pre-existing condition" and "Lifetime maximum" don't send shivers down your spine then you're not correctly remembering how terrible it was. For all the flaws the US health care system has it's simply miles ahead of what it was pre-Obamacare.
I didn't say that health insurance isn't better than it was. All I'm saying is that costs have outpaced inflation. It doesn't matter because the US healthcare system is still a massive farce and simply exists to leach profits off the American public. Even those that make well into the 6 figures are just one accident or diagnosis away from being massively in debt or driven into destitution just to afford medical care.
>There's also studies out there that show where you were born/raised can have a significant impact on mobility
I didn't see anything in that article about if and how much worse is today than it used to be.
> I'm saying that wages have gone up at a lower rate than inflation,
That's just factually incorrect. Real hourly wages have held steady since the 60s and are slightly up from when millennials were born:
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2018/08/07/for-most-...
...
This is why I don't usually like to wade into these debates. People have a warped perception of how things used to be and how they've changed.
This kind of curve without at least an estimation of the variance does not mean anything.
The opposite is occurring in countries that prioritized manufacturing jobs and skilled trades. The liberal arts, service led economy turned out to be a lie - as some of us knew all along.
+ Stagnated wages relative to inflation for much more than 20+ years
Inflation can be supply side, demand side, or both. US monetary policy, trade policy and foreign aid lifted about 2 billion people out of poverty in places like China, India and elsewhere. That is 2 billion new consumers of the same day-to-day living essentials you want -- at the very same time US supply side capacity was reduced by offshoring and new regs. We made the bed we are now sleeping in.
+ Economic mobility is significantly worse
For those without skills in demand this is true. Unskilled and wrong-skilled labor is largely worthless in the US, but pays a subsistence wage in some other countries - in exchange for horrid working conditions.
+ The education system is in worse shape than 20+ years ago + Higher education is more costly, and no longer improves prospects of gainful employment nor additional earning potential
I don't see the problem. I have kids in school and they are learning about gender equality, racism, white privilege and social justice. This is what the teachers want to teach, what the school boards support & what the media talks about most days. Isn't this an improvement from the barbaric reading, writing & arithmetic days of old?
+ Health insurance costs that significantly outpace inflation
Hold on there. My 83 year old father only expended hundreds of thousands of medicare dollars on chemo and supportive care for an extra three months of life - for which my family is very grateful. We cannot deprive the elderly of extra time, no matter how miserable it may be, just to make healthcare more affordable for kids and people in the prime of their life. That would be agism!
+ Kids today will be living under a surveillance state from day 1
But fortunately the surveillance will be from the CCP via TikTok, and from corporations via Instagram, SnapChat, etc. We don't need to worry about USGOV surveillance because its only weaponized against prominent political opponents, and not against the average citizen.
In sum... the status quo is what most people claimed they wanted without any serious consideration of the follow on effects. You get not only the government you deserve in a democracy, but also the economy and social structure you deserve.