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Comment by MajorLOL | Hacker News Reader

>If you’re over 62, your odds of having at least $1 million in net wealth (your total assets minus your total debt) are relatively achievable -- about 1 in 7. But if you are under 40, your odds are low: 1 in 55.

So the older you are the more time you have had to grow wealth. The younger you are the less time you have had. This is then forcibly tied into median family income?

this is huffington post tier article.

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That's missing the point entirely: yes, older people usually have more money than younger people. But there's been a drastic, meaningful change in just how much richer older people are than younger.

Maybe there are good reasons for this, maybe not, but it's not just a restatement of the obvious.

Except there hasn't really been. If you look at their graph of wealth by age for all cohorts, the younger ones are actually ahead of the older ones up until the 2008 recession hits; and yeah, they drop after that, but then resume climbing. The effect does not look drastic unless you cherry pick a few years to focus on.

> Young people (generally defined here as those under 40)

What is with the media and this strange concept of "young people" now being the 28-40 age bracket? Back in my day, "young people" meant 8-18 year olds.

This isn't the only article making this bizarre wordplay. One of the previous USDS "submarine" articles referred to "young people" on a team as the members who were over 28.

Clearly they are talking about 'the workforce' as 'people'. 'kids' are not considered anything but a cost center in their equation.

'kids' used to work and earn money. That used to be a real category. It's not anymore. A lot of people don't learn how to really manage their money until after they've graduated from college and realize that they're going broke and that there are no new loans.

Is that irresponsible of them? Sure! But how were they supposed to learn if they couldn't get a job and make some of their own money?

Like "big" and "fast," "young" is relative. A small person is much larger than a large ant, and a fast bike will generally go slower than a slow car. These people are young compared to the older people they're looking at.

Did you even read past the first paragraph? The piece addresses your point directly and shows how the situation is getting worse, with the older generation having become increasingly likely to be wealthy over the past few decades and vice versa.

Did you make it to the end of the article?

While I agree that's not a stunning insight, I don't think the author should be punished for stating the clearest conclusion of a graph before talking more about it.

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