Gen Z are turning to delusional thinking to cope

I don't see how that's true? If you're well educated in something useful and you're conscientious, there are a lot of corporate jobs that pay more than enough to sock away a good amount of savings, especially if you're willing to stay frugal. And if you're not particularly well educated in the college sense, but are willing to work hard, good tradespeople are in incredibly high demand. But certainly, some sectors have become more difficult to make your way in.

In terms of investing/gambling, the Buffett method of buying solid companies that make things that people need at a reasonable price is still much more reliable than hopping on the latest hype train. The hordes of WSB/GME bagholders would have been much better off just buying into Berkshire and then doing something more productive with their time. But I guess that's less fun than chanting "apes together strong" and imagining that you're sticking it to the hedge funds.

Anyway, I hope we can channel some of this disaffection and anger into getting a carbon tax passed, with a rebate and border adjustment. In addition to being the best hope I see against climate change, it will likely make local manufacturing more competitive, and therefore give people who want to do those kinds of jobs more leverage to demand better pay. And since the rich are responsible for much more carbon generation than the poor, an equal rebate should leave the poor ahead even despite the inflation it would cause, and help reduce wealth inequality.

In my country I've been voting since 16, because my vote actually counts. But if I were a citizen of the USA/UK or other similar countries, maybe I wouldn't bother too. What's the point?..

At later stages the Occupy movement was infiltrated by 'other' causes camps. The 'identity' focus causes became vocal within - the early days of social justice causes. That is something you need to avoid like plague to run successful movement - lack of direction, due to multiple divergent goals. It caused people to loose interest as movement was going everywhere and nowhere. Lets bring up Solidarity, they had leaders and quickly drafted what they want and did not stray from that path. If solidarity wanted democratic poland and strengthening ties with catholic church and establishment of diplomatic ties with africa and banning of military production... it would be hard to get all people behind all of the goals and it would be hard to achieve all those goals. I digress... back to occupy.

Since then media created new fault lines for populous to fight over. Straight man vs the world, men vs women, whites oppressing non-whites, police vs blacks, can trans people use toilets and so on and on. We are bombarded by those narratives constantly. The moment one fades next one takes place.

Those are very easy to instigate as all of them are based primary on emotions - whatever the factual background of the issue is.

Occupy Wall Street and future movements like that need to be based on facts and logic to expose all of the systems that siphon wealth up into unproductive upper class. It takes effort to expose those complex systems and educate people about it to the point where they want to change it.

In contrast to: police kills people, here is a video example, now come protest against injustice. Nothing really changes as nobody is doing anything about the underlying systems that create those outcomes... and look new injustice... we need to protest that now.

I don't have any evidence but I find it very coincidental what happened with Occupy and thereafter, to not be suspicious if people targeted by Occupy did not do anything about it.

I would love to see candidates addressing the needs/wants of Gen-Z... But uhh, I don't know anyone who is actually appealing to them. The only 2 parties I see (in the us) are:

Republicans: Actively trying to harm them. Democrats: Actively trying to maintain the status quo.

Neither of these groups are interested in Gen-Z issues. The Democrats pay lip-service, but don't actually want to shake up the social hierarchy. So instead they mostly try and move to the center for the more regular turnout they know how to ask for.

Gen-Z is not stupid. And I believe they demonstrate good turnout for the candidates they like... Maybe Politicians should be doing more to appeal to them instead of older generations that they claim are who they need to appeal to.

What do you mean? Last time I was in Europe, their healthcare wasn't the pinnacle of healthcare systems. Cheap? Sure. Effective? Not really.

The wealthiest don't have an absurdly high income, they own enough assets to live off dividends and wealth appreciation, which typically gets taxed 20-30%. If they even have an income to be taxed, it's basically symbolic.

This is where the real inequality exists, and it's unfortunately not part of the discussion at all. Instead wagies with slightly higher than average income get portrayed as 18th century mustache twisting top-hat capitalist factory owners.

Not really. You paid the effective 6K for the "crime" of keeping that money under the mattress. Put your savings in an investment instead.

You could also have it in the market. Neither will dramatically beat inflation, but they will beat it.

The debatable part here is the merits of pretty much having to understand finance to not lose money all the time is a separate topic. I am in IT and always thought my finance/stats degrees were a complete joke, but it helps to have an intuitive understanding of this stuff not to get **ed by the basics.

"Gen Zers are tracking ahead of their parents’ homeownership rate: 30% of 25-year olds owned their home in 2022, higher than the 27% rate for Gen Xers when they were the same age. But the Gen Zers who didn’t take advantage of the pandemic-era’s low mortgage rates could be left behind."[0]

[0]https://www.redfin.com/news/gen-z-millennial-homeownership-r...

Best you can do is tax income a lot and capital gains at 30%. Which is exactly what we do in Europe.

Unused property and land is already taxed through property taxes. Regardless, unused property is an easy scapegoat but not a significant problem (similar to the foreign investor bogeyman) when the real problems are loose monetary policy, speculation, NIMBY zoning, and real supply/demand imbalances.

I think, much as millennials were a decade ago, Gen Z is just a straw man to explain why the world is the way it is. It's the same thing that happens with, for instance, interest rates -- financial reporters always ascribe central interest rates to a particular phenomenon, but as soon as their preferred cause proves unrelated, they find a new certain cause.

To be fair, certain things have been made much easier for them.

Sure, getting a house ie even more difficult for ever new generation, but, as an older millennial, I would have killed to have had access to the same mental, acne and dental treatments, that Gen-Z has access to today, and also, to the vast and easy to access community contributed information pool on the internat on topics like emigration, taxes, jobs, financial investment and career advice, dating advice, that's so easy to get nowadays versus 10-20 years ago. It would have made my teenage and adult life much, much easier on all fronts.

In present Austria. The one you lived in till 2013 doesn't exist anymore.

Buying something decent today in one of the "major" cities is impossible even on tech wages.

Just got offered 2600 Euros take home salary for a product owner position while people are asking for 700k Euros for 20 year old houses outside of the city.

That's a patently false statement.

There is room for exponential growth in housing. There is money for that exponential growth.

Those with the monies to do so simply aren't spending it on housing for median income families, single persons, elderly persons, homeless persons, etc.

Those with the financial ability simply don't spend in that manner.

There is no 'supply shortage' of housing. There are, however, discriminatory housing policies, practices, procedures, and fees.

Where were there low mortgage rates this year?

Articles like https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2023/05/millenn... and https://www.cato.org/commentary/american-wealth-machine-its-...

The oldest would be only 24, and most of them would still be children. So unsurprising they don't account for much household wealth in that time!