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Comment by ozr | Hacker News Reader

A pathological sort of comparison is much more common now. They assume that what their parents have (with 20+ years of work), or what they see on social media, is what they should have too. That they don't is perceived as a great injustice.

You can see someone that has what you want and either a) work towards it, or b) complain.

There's always a mix of both, but b) is very loud right now.

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Or perhaps they think they should have what their parents had 20 years ago when they were children and their parents were in their 20's?

Depending on your choice of measure, they are either greatly beyond their parents or mildly behind.

More importantly, why is that a reasonable expectation?

Young people today eh? A refrain as old as time.

And, as we know, there are no cultural changes between generations.

Some things provably never change: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/nobody-wants-to-work-anymo...

This is cute, but not data. When you look at actual data, it shows that it actually has changed over time. There is a gradual rise in the labor force participation rate as more women enter the workforce, up until a peak in ~2001. It's been dropping ever since.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CIVPART

Depends on which data you look at:

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300060

That seems like very little change.

Excluding people 16-24 would definitely remove the vast majority of the population addressed above.

The largest drop appears to be the in 16 to 19 age group -- hardly the group trying to be independent. Outside of that group it again doesn't seem very different.

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