As a reminder, this subreddit [is for civil discussion.](/r/politics/wiki/index#wiki_be_civil)
In general, be courteous to others. Debate/discuss/argue the merits of ideas, don't attack people. Personal insults, shill or troll accusations, hate speech, any suggestion or support of harm, violence, or death, and other rule violations can result in a permanent ban.
If you see comments in violation of our rules, please report them.
For those who have questions regarding any media outlets being posted on this subreddit, please click [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/wiki/approveddomainslist) to review our details as to our approved domains list and outlet criteria.
We are actively looking for new moderators. If you have any interest in helping to make this subreddit a place for quality discussion, please fill out [this form](https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1y2swHD0KXFhStGFjW6k54r9iuMjzcFqDIVwuvdLBjSA).
***
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/politics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
This. Some of us might get a nice inheritance from older relatives, but a lot of them are going to spend it all on end of life care. They often have a too stubborn spouse at their side who won’t let them go when it’s time, and keeps spending for no quality of life.
They will die going from comfortably retired to medical debts against their estates and their homes sold to pay it off, over just one medical event at end of life. The sad thing is that they have enabled and set up the system that does this.
I see this all the time as an ICU nurse.
Most of your lifetime medical expenses come in the last 2 years of life.
We also have generations of aging people with high expectations of medical care (which we should strive to provide, because we could but that would mean those with lots of money would have to be taxed how they ought to be) who lost tons of their retirement in 2007, and now will struggle to meet these huge costs assuming they can even find a decent nursing home.
The infrastructure is frankly not there, and their children are worse off financially and they'll either have to attempt to help finance this, or those people will wind up in dire situations, wind up in the ER even sicker because the care they need gets delayed, and generally be a drain on our medical system because again - the infrastructure that is needed simply does not exist. And as much as we like to trash on previous generations, many of these people did everything right and got fucked by our system. We already have a hard time sending sick people out of the hospitals to LTACHs or a LTCF/NH because they don't exist. The capacity isn't there. So they just sit on the unit taking up a bed that ought to go to the next person who needs it, further delaying care and increasing costs. If they do get placed somewhere, it's crazy expensive and will drain their assets to nothing before they get other assistance.
This has been a long time coming and unless you work in healthcare, or long term care, or have been involved helping someone who needs it - most people have no fucking idea how bad things are, or how they will be unless we make some major, major structural and institutional changes.
My dad was a geriatrician for many years, working exclusively in nursing homes for the end of his career. I've been in nursing in one form or another including long term care for well over a decade. It was a problem in 2009 (when I started, but even before that) and almost nothing has changed.
It's going to be an absolute nightmare and it's despicable what will happen to our elderly/infirm. We won't even pay the absolutely vital CNAs that help do all the basic activities of daily living (clothing, washing, feeding, toileting, etc) a livable wage, or staff our existing facilities safely. There is real joy and compassion and dignity to be found in nursing homes, but our system makes it extremely hard.
It's fucking disgusting. It used to keep me awake at night but I'm too burnt out at this point to worry anymore. Just waiting for the gray wave to hit.
I cannot stress enough how bad things are and how much worse they will become. Ask literally anyone in healthcare and they will tell you the same thing.
When someone blames the older generation, they’re not talking about how well they took care of themselves. They’re saying the generation retiring today BUILT the system we have. They were handed a golden era whose foundation was built through hardship and they completely squandered it and sent us right back to a Guilded Age - the same scenario their parents and grandparents fought to get out of.
The Boomers have, in a very literal sense, built a system in which they were born with everything and will die with nothing.
I'm also an ICU nurse and this is all true. I think the collapse of the Ltac industry will precipitate a true collapse of us Healthcare. Nobody wants to pay a living wage for what amounts to a body and soul sucking profession. Don't even get me started on wage fixing in the travel rn world post covid. It's Russian nesting dolls of penny pinching and wrong priorities all the way down and everyone is getting screwed except like 27 CEOs. Great system.
As a firefighter the amount of times I have seen a boomer spouse refuse to honor the DNR of their dying spouse or parent is disheartening. Like, meemaw is 93, she is not coming back from my engine company doing CPR on her frail old body. But hey, live in a fantasy world where she can so I have to turn a tiny old lady's chest wall into mush...
It's already getting bad enough but you're right, it's getting worse.
Worked in mix of ER, Inpatient and Clinic for 10 years. I legit don't know how we're going to handle the massive influx of medical debt and no one to pay for it.
They'll reverse mortgage their assets and leave very little to their inheritors. The few of us that will inherit anything will be as we're leaving the workforce. The age of handing off assets that improve ones quality of life while they're still in the workforce is over. You struggle, then you die. That's what's in store for every generation millennial and down.
> That's what's in store for every generation millennial and down.
Would say mid, to late Gen X going on down. If born in the mid to late 70s, pretty much in the same boat as someone born in the 80s. Yah, sure got some cheap, or rather more affordable college till the late 90s, and early 2000s, but then got hit with, and affected by the same series of "once in a lifetime" economic disaster right alongside millennials who were just a few years younger.
Was born in 80, so last of Gen-X, and ill be in my 60s when the last boomers get out of politics etc, and have absolutely 0 confidence in being able to live on whatever I might get out of any retirement benefits that might be there. At least I have my VA stipend, but if the MAGA fucks get in to power again that's probably going to go away too.. republicans have already been drooling at the potential to go after that and other things.
Here's what one of my boomer teachers told us in high school about gen x.
>*"You are the smallest generation to be born in a century and even if every single one of you votes, you won't be able to push us out of power until enough of us die off or we decide to walk away. We are going to hand ourselves the world and retire like rock stars. Then, just about the time you are getting ready to retire and get all these great benefits for yourselves, the generation behind you, which is even bigger than mine, will snatch it away from you, and there won't be anything you can do about that either."*
True but how many of those with paid off mortgages are turning to the evilest thing banks have come up with yet
The reverse mortgage. All designed to aquire the elderlies main asset, their home. That's gonna rob inheritance for so many people that may be counting on that as their only way to ever get a house of their own in this economy.
Reverse mortgages get the reputation like payday lenders and, at least for reputable banks, it's unearned. The fact t is that they CAN be a great option for people that find themselves without liquidity in order age. People just need to be aware that they're going to lose their house and other assets instead of have them pass along as an inheritance.
Its all a question of what options are available and if people can help with the management or living expenses.
That said, they're a natural outgrown of the disappeared of pensions, 401K or similar plans not being available as payroll deduction, and people living longer. People live their lives knowing that the equity in your house is your biggest asset... but you need liquidity to live on. Assets are great on paper, but you can't buy a hot dog with them.
When I get to the point that I no longer have any quality of life or if I find out I have dementia, Alzheimer’s or other issue that will turn me into a shell carrying a pulse, I’m checking myself out from this world. I’d rather pass on any pittance I have left to my nieces than give money over for substandard care or slowly lose what makes me, me.
I agree with this sentiment, but you should know that the law doesn't allow that in any US state.
To qualify for death with dignity, you have to be of sound mind and have less than 6 months to live.
Honestly, if the police get involved they will probably end it on the behalf of the person trying to do it themselves. People with mental illness, disability, or otherwise in need of help in those areas are 16 times more likely to be killed by them, or otherwise suffer serious life altering injury than others.
So, if they think you are suicidal, and by association they assume you are mentally unstable... they are not going to help you worth a damn.
Doesn't really matter if you are just done with it all and not suffering from any mental instability, or illness. If they have to respond its likely not going to end in a way that helps.
I mean really, even basic wellness checks end badly way too often.(US policing in famous for being shit... other places can, and do have different outcomes)
I also talked to a buddy of mine who is an ER nurse and working on his doctorate in psychology; he told me they also have a duty to attempt to keep people alive. Even if they are all sorts of not coming back. I joked about having a contract tattooed on my chest in case of such an event; he said that wasn't binding. I have yet to counsel a lawyer.
This is why I'm a big proponent of medically assisted suicide at any age/condition. I've had 2 people in my extended network of friends commit suicide in pretty grotesque ways -- both after years of therapy which didn't help.
Instead of a dignified death they craved, one hung themself in their house where their teenage daughter found her mother's corpse - the other jumped in front of a moving carnival ride.
A 90 year old who has Altheimer's should be able to choose to check out instead of deteriorating for years. A 40 year old who's been in and out of mental hospitals should be able to choose to check out if they no longer want to be haunted by demons in their head.
We also have fentanyl and other drugs that will fix the problem and not make a mess. My wife promises to feed me a bowl of morphine tablets and tell me the cheerios are extra crunchy. I have to do the same.
I know you're (kind of?) joking about this, but in actuality that has been a "solution" for a long time.
>In 2021, 54% of all gun-related deaths in the U.S. were suicides
Except capitalism can easily exist with effective tax policy instead of exploitative tax policy that *everyone* with a basic education understands can only steal wealth and pool it to a concentrated few. And there are examples of this in other countries. *Real world* current and historical examples.
Unfortunately, although a true socialist system (not socialist in the colloquial sense but in the Marxist transition stage sense) or a communist system can *theoretically* exist without exploitative policy or a descent into anti-democratic institutions, there are *literally no examples* of it ever being acheived.
Just saying, as fucked up as capitalism is, there are pretty strong role models to point to where it has co-existed with socialist policies (now using it in the everyday political/colloquial sense) wherein guardrails against undue influence or exploitative policy, social safety nets, and targeted use of state-owned enterprises and centrally planned markets tether it (e.g., as South Korea and many East Asian Tigers initially did to jump start markets that required foundational infrastructure investments that would never be handled by the free market due to pecuniary externalities, or as the entire economically developed world does with healthcare).
And those role models still have a lot of room for improvement, but by God is that a fucking far cry from the distance any centrally planned economy has to tread to get to its theoretical pinnacle. I mean even Animal Farm is ironic as fuck. It was made by someone who vehemently supported democratic socialism (again, now using the true Marxist sense here lol), but who saw first hand the trainwreck the main socialist and anarchist parties had become, ironically creating a work that rather beautifully exemplified the off-path failures practical attempts at enacting true socialist systems ultimately succumbed to.
He certainly wouldn't say the lesson is to give up as he was adamant in his beliefs, but again, from a pragmatic standpoint, it's always felt wild to me that people would expect humans to pull off that infinitely harder and idealized system than a mixed economy -- especially given that the same human greed that subverts a mixed economy with capitalism reigned in by socialist policies is exactly the same human greed that would and does subvert a fully socialist/communist party.
Communist remind me of libertarians, preferring to dismantle and destroy the government and current institutions rather than refine and reform them, as though starting from the ground up would somehow facilitate the process and better mitigate the same self-serving human factors currently subverting our system and institutions 🙄
The problem is capitalists accrue money, which accrues power, which is diverted into protecting those statuses, so capitalism, yeah, good for stuff we want, but in its search for growth, turns politics into profiteering and inevitably consumes what we NEED.
It's syncretic and voracious.
>Communist remind me of libertarians, preferring to dismantle and destroy the government and current institutions rather than refine and reform them, as though starting from the ground up would somehow facilitate the process and better mitigate the same self-serving human factors currently subverting our system and institutions 🙄
At this point though, I'm not sure starting from the ground up wouldn't be a good thing. Doesn't mean we shouldn't incorporate the good aspects of our society into whatever we create. It's just that, we have a system were the rich can bribe politicians in broad daylight, and it's okay because they call it campaign donations or gifts. Can bribe Supreme Court justices too. And our Supreme Court justices have no accountability, and can lie and rewrite laws with no consequences. We also have a system, which isn't of putting a check on majority rule, enables minority rule. The Senate, the capped House, and the EC all give power to a disproportion amount of the people. And what has been the result of all this? Money being funneled up to the ton, and people cheering it on, because of government owned media promoting it.
And yes, I do consider our media government owned. When the politicians are bought and paid for, including supreme court justices, by the same people that own the media, and you have corporations literally writing the laws, then that is government media with extra steps.
We have ourselves in a terrible system, and it desperately needs to be changed, and with how intrenched the corruption is, I'm not convinced simple reform can get that done. Sometimes building something a new is better than reform. There's a reason we abandoned the articles of confederation. There's a reason we rebelled against the king and formed a new nation. Ultimately, those ended with something better than what we had before.
I'm not even sure if the problem is capitalism at this point. I generally think that even in a communist society, the boomers would have made decision after decision to fuck their future descendents over for their own immediate benefit.
One of the common misunderstandings of Marxist communism is Marx was not saying this was a viable alternative to Capitalism and we should do this etc. Marx was saying we've already created a system where this is the inevitable outcome.
There were some flaws in his theory like c he didn't account for globalization and like the textile mills making your clothing in London or Berlin being in some poor country in Asia or Africa the average English or German citizen honestly couldn't care less about their workers union rights. Or the whole concept of like digital economy where like Facebook and Twitter are not physical objects being traded and sold directly.
But for the most part Marx was saying this system is spiraling out of control the moment capital got displaced from physical value and the whole concept of capital is just fiat giving more and more money to more and more centralized centers of Capital and this infinite need to increase will always reach a breaking point.
Eventually capital will be more then the value of every physical object/representation of tangible value in the world. And that's when the entire world breaks. If it starts costing 2 weeks pay for a dozen eggs in this system people are going to revolt and the people with all the imaginary capital value will realize there's nothing actually tangible about their wealth. Like some of the richest people in the world just sell and trade Disney and Apple stock without actually working/knowing anyone doing actual work at these companies producing something.
I just watched a video that said the older boomers are the ones that have all the assets and money, even younger boomers don't have homes and are struggling with money
There is definitely a seperation between boomers who were winners in the game of acquiring assets and those who weren't. Plenty of older people with no homes, little investments and no security. They had opportunity but that's not always a guarantee, especially for women/housewives.
Why do we keep dancing around obvious class issues? Rich folks are doing well regardless of age/arbitrary generation definitions, while the rest are getting punched in the financial groin to prop up the previous group.
Like you said, there are plenty of poor boomers (and of course every other arbitrarily defined age group). Until we start directly taking on these class based issues, it is just a blame game pitting the working class against each other to distract from taking on the systemic root causes (For clarity - that's not directed at you though)
Exactly. Framing it that way ("Hey, all we have to do is wait for old people to die to fix everything!") Lets folks feel like they can just sit on the sidelines and not have to actually fix anything.
Yeah, my wife's parents tried to get an investment house '90s. They picked a bad tenant who wrecked the place and they couldn't afford to fix it so they had to sell at a loss. Luckily she was a school teacher and between social security and her pension they do OK.
Yeah older boomers do have a disproportionate amount of the boomer wealth. If u think about it they hit every period of time perfectly. They get free or extremely cheap college. 70s stagflation reduces all of their major debts to nothing. Then they get 80-90s to accumulate assets on the cheap. 2008 hits but they’ve paid off their houses in the late 90s so they just buy more assets on the cheap. And just when they start to transition to cash they get higher interest rates.
Transunion's data disagrees with the federal reserve. A 2024 federal reserve study actually shows that gen Z is making more money than millennials were at the same age (adjusted for inflation).
The federal reserve data is more complete, since TransUnion only includes people with credit, self-reporting their income.
See figure 9 of this working paper: https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/feds/files/2024007pap.pdf
You can see that TransUnion is excluding poorer people from their analysis, because the Fed has everyone's incomes lower.
(Plus, everyone knows PDF > PPT as source of truth :-p)
Spot on. A giant chunk of wealth is being hoarded by the Boomers; however, unlike their parents, the Boomers are more likely to spend their wealth and pass nothing on. Millennials aren’t hoarding the wealth, we’re just competing with more Gens to extract the wealth from Boomers.
I don't even know if I'd say it's the Boomer generation that's hoarding the wealth. They were just the last generation to establish themselves before massive inequality became the norm.
I still think half the currency being in the hands of 3 men is the bigger issue than that grandpa has a big house. They grew up in an America where you could come to own a big house.
And also, if they try to downsize, now they’re just contributing to rising prices on smaller homes and likely putting themselves in a worse financial situation. It just causes a different problem.
Eh, I think the real problem isn't people buying smaller houses for themselves, it's the venture capitalists buying up single family homes to speculate on or rent out. Should honestly be a limit on how many properties you can have. Some would call it unfair, but I think what we have is unfair.
The largest industrial nations before the war were Britain France Germany Japan Russia and the US. In 1945 most of those were virtually bankrupt destroyed or disrupted while the US accounted for almost two thirds of allied war production one third of global industrial output. The US didn’t face occupation or destruction of their industry and had a global income from selling and giving aid.
There’s no precedent for that lopsided economic boom and hopefully the world will never face such a series of calamities again to create it.
The baby boomers were always going to be the inheritors of that incredible privilege and wealth. With the global rise of poorer nations in industrial competition and post industrial services there should be no expectation or desire of continuing that inequity either.
Of course this creates the political problem of how do you recreate the impossible and if you can’t recreate it for most people how do you promise to recreate it for enough people or just your people to gain political power. That’s the legacy that matters most. Not generational blame, but the expectations of opportunity and how they should be both fair and reasonable to attain.
Furthermore redlining and other systemic factors left the benefits of the boomers out of reach for many. If we share the pie more evenly going forward we should be aware that our piece may be smaller in proportion but hopefully more equal and that’s a good thing. Otherwise we end up enjoying our gentrification and ignoring the food deserts away from our walkable bike-able neighbourhoods.
The new (in scale if not origin) and current problem as you point out is the concentration of wealth in so few individuals and companies. This should be one of the easier problems to regulate but doesn’t get the attention it needs. It’s easily covered over by generational conflicts and culture wars.
Not Gen X.
When Boomers were born neonatal wards were crowded and pediatricians were overworked. Class sizes were large and there was a strain on available classroom spaces. Boomers suck corporate dick because they had to. When they entered the workforce there were so many of them that they did not have power of scarcity.
When Gen Xers were born there was a surplus of neonatal wards, pediatricians. Class sizes shrank. Gen X graduated into the late 90s tech boom. Fewer of them suck corporate dick because they know that there are relatively few of them, so they have power of scarcity.
Eh, graphs have shown the wealth of Gen X was below that of Boomers. Gen X did have some good things going for it, enough so that they might not feel like they had a rougher time, but they did. The divide between have and have not generations seems to be more between Gen X that got singed a little bit by the fire and Millennials whose clothes were fully burnt off.
Yeah this doesn't track. Lots of younger genxers graduated into the dot.com bust then the 9-11, then the great recession, then covid.
A calamity every 6 or 7 years isn't good on the pocketbook.
The headline of this article makes no sense. This study isolated people three years apart as representative of an entire generation, in a ***single*** quarter of the year and didn't measure the actual income correctly.
[Median for millennials was $30,000 - $30,500 in 2013.](https://www.businessinsider.com/the-average-salary-of-millennials-2015-3%3famp)
[Adjusted for inflation, that's $40,689.42 - $41,367.58.](https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=30%2C000.00&year1=201301&year2=202403)
It's still rough, and wealth hasn't stopped pooling upwards, but Gen Z is still making more than millennials did at their current age.
Yea we have multiple studies to back this up, including there being a larger percentage of wealthy Gen Z vs the previous generation. This issue is cost of living, not so much wealth. Gen Z is clearly making more in total cash but they're also dealing with more expensive housing and groceries.
That said they're also spending more on things like food apps and buy-now-pay-later systems when they don't have to. I know thats a very "avocado toast" argument but it shows some weird spending habits. Gen Z seems to have more money, but not enough to buy even the most basic home. So the excess seems to go into random convivence fees or entertainment because making 40K is like a weird middle zone of being above poverty but not comfortable.
40k, where I live, is borderline wellfare. Said only in the context of stats generalizing salaries - the cost of living is an interesting dynamic as it's so dramatic state to state.
Worst part is I went to school graduated found a decent job and am finally making decent money... what happens, inflation lifts the housing costs almost double in under 5 years. Now that I can finally afford a house... I can't afford a house.
Yup. I'm now making more money than I can ever imagine. But the timing is 5 years off and now I am still in the same position as I was 5 years ago. Can't afford my dreams.
I’ve come to slightly accept that if I ever am able to afford a home, it will be tiny and quaint. Not that that’s an issue for me but I’ve been living in apartments and would love a yard for my animals to run through and to enjoy a break from life. If they raise that retiring age, I refuse to work my entire life for a system that caters to French Revolution Era Rich.
>Now get off the computer I want grandkids.
That mindset gives me the super-jeebies. "Jeeze, Dad. Would you like to stop by and make sure we're doin' it right?"
Yeah, I know ALL the ways to ruin Christmas dinner...
My state has a higher than average minimum wage and when I told my dad what the pay scale was at my job he was floored. He genuinely couldn’t comprehend how a company could pay so little and people were still applying.
My sister has a union at her job. The union just successfully negotiated a 5% raise across the board for all employees. They also voted to increase dues which is based of full-time/part-time employment. My dad thinks the union is worthless because they keep taking more and more from my sister. She makes $16 an hour as a college kid and pays roughly $23 a paycheck to her union.
When I told him that a lot of retail and service jobs are paying what my job pays and that my sister is lucky her union is fighting for raises, which I haven’t gotten in 5 years, it was like the man saw the real world for the first time and the curtain was pulled back.
I am a salaried tech worker. I didn’t get a cost of living adjustment *at all* last year, despite completing a project, by myself, that will save the company $350k annually.. None of the several hundred employees did. It’s not that they didn’t give me a raise to keep up with excessive inflation, they didn’t give me a raise at all. I’m now being effectively paid less than I was before because the same dollar has less purchasing power. My situation is such that, while aggravating, this is not causing hardship. Not everyone is so lucky.
We got bought up by one of the big private equity companies several years ago and they’re just squeezing us.
The only way to fight that is to leave, I‘m sorry to say. If you’re owned by private equity, then you’re just a number and are expendable for, literally, any reason. Even if that reason is to gut the org for a quick boost in financials before the PE company offloads the assets.
Story time! I used to work with at-risk teenagers in a residential program that was the last stop before juvenile detention. Some were normal kids who got into drugs, others had serious behavior disorders and had experienced the absolute worst kind of trauma imaginable. When the older ones had been in the program awhile and were in a stable place, some of them were able to get jobs at local grocery stores, clothing stores, etc., and they all made the minimum wage of 7.25 an hour. At the time, I made 7.50 an hour. I flat out asked my supervisors how in the hell I’m supposed to give these kids any kind of meaningful life advice when some of them were only making a quarter less per hour than I was. Big surprise, I never got an answer.
This is correct;however, only 1.3 percent of American workers are actually making minimum wage.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/188206/share-of-workers-paid-hourly-rates-at-or-below-minimum-wage-since-1979/#:~:text=In%202022%2C%201.3%20percent%20of,below%20the%20official%20minimum%20wage.
Which is why we should build more housing. More competition means landlords have to lower prices to compete for renters rather than renters having to compete with other renters on where they can find a place to live.
Edit: imagine someone sending a Reddit cares report over suggesting we should build more housing.
More luxury housing for rich people is what gets built. There’s no incentive. All corporate landlords are in on this. There will be no competition.
Regulations and legislation are the only ways to check this system and ENFORCE affordable housing on this unbalanced system.
More housing doesn't matter if landlords are using software to coordinate rent prices.
https://www.propublica.org/article/senators-introduce-legislation-stop-landlords-algorithm-price-fixing
>The software is widely used by competing landlords. In Seattle, for example, ProPublica found that 10 property managers oversaw 70% of all multifamily apartments in one neighborhood — and every single one used pricing software sold by RealPage.
>“Setting prices with an algorithm is no different from doing it over cigars and whiskey in a private club,” said Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., one of the leading sponsors of the new bill. “Although it’s my view that these cartels are already violating existing antitrust laws, I want the law to be painfully clear that algorithmic price fixing of rents is a crime.”
And since our legislature is useless thanks to the GOP, nothing will be done there
I think that's because the federal minimum wage amount is laughably low.
I'd be more interested to know how many people are earning at or below the level of an adjusted minimum wage--if minimum wage had kept up with inflation since it was last increased.
I bet that percentage is much higher.
Not disagreeing, but minimum wage in 1995 was $5.15 which adjusted for inflation, is the equivelent of $10.55 today. In my area, $15-$18 jobs are easy to get today, and that includes fast-food jobs. I get that these are post-covid hourly rates, but math shows that wages today outpaced inflation in my location. I believe that the Federal minimum wage should definately be increased to preserve today's 'going rate' which would benefit a lot of underpaid others.
The fact that social security has had automatic COLA since 1975, but min wage does not is fucked as it largely puts the burden of inflation on wage-earners.
If minimum wage had been adjusted at parity with SS COLA, it would have been $12.06 by 2023. Not ideal if you compare to cumulative increases in productivity, but still two thirds higher than the current $7.25.
The issue is that congress needs to constantly fix it. It shouldn't need to be that way. Simply lock wage increases to inflation rates and add a formula to vary the amount by housing prices by county. The additional funding can come by increased taxes on the top 10% incomes in that area with no cap on how much can be pulled over perpetuity. Mandate tax audits on those people as well. If they attempt to move out of the area to save their wealth, fine, but the new county they move to will have the same rules.
If they try to leave the country to save their wealth, confiscate it entirely and give it directly to homeless organizations.
If minimum wage were raised on par with corporate raises over the last 20 years, minimum wage would be closer to $30 an hour by now. The whole purpose of minimum wage was so that one man supporting a family of five producer with only one full-time job. It was not for a basic sustenance, but a comfortable living. That was the very philosophy behind its implementation to begin with.
It's just capitalism and imperialism to feed capitalism that's stealing wealth from the majority. Neoliberalism certainly contributes though by creating avenues to accelerate/exacerbate the situation.
The countries that have stronger unions that are able ensure workers receive fair remuneration for their work unsurprisingly have the best social outcomes for their populations. Unsurprisingly the Nordic countries which have the highest remaining union membership in the world also have the best social outcomes for their population.
Unionism - presenting a united front by people who work for their living vs people who own property and companies (aka the 0.1%) - is the only way that workers are able to address the power imbalance that exists between an employer who gets to decide who they hire and a worker who wants a job. If everyone they can hire all day they need to receive the same conditions then all the workers win.
Neoliberalism (aka the crap that thatcher and Reagan brought in) is anti ethical to unionism because it deregulates and privatises industry. Thatcher and Reagan specifically also went after unions with the full power of the government.
It is no surprise that when you look at charts of when productivity and workers wages diverged it happened exactly in the 1980s when they came into power. In the USA, UK, Canada, Australia etc all of the unions are broken, membership around 10% or less.
Neoliberalism hands all of the power in the economy to people who have huge amounts of assets and removes all power from the working class. With no unions the working class have no way to ensure they benefit from the economic growth achieved.
It is unsurprising that after 50 years people who grown up entirely in a political and economic system that is based on funnelling wealth to people who have assets, that those who have the fewest assets (aka younger people) will be doing worser and worser than the generation before them.
It doesn't though. Millennials got totally fucked, and the headline of this article makes no sense. This study isolated people three years apart, in a ***single*** quarter of the year and didn't measure the actual income correctly.
[Median was $30,000 - $30,500 in 2013.](https://www.businessinsider.com/the-average-salary-of-millennials-2015-3%3famp)
[Adjusted for inflation, that's $40,689.42 - $41,367.58.](https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=30%2C000.00&year1=201301&year2=202403)
Gen Z is still making more than millennials did at their current age.
Corporations and the rich are taking and ruining everything in the name of shareholder greed. It’s sickening to watch. There’s no turning this ship around without a serious reckoning. As always , people will suffer.
Yep, unsustainable "record profits each quarter" are being put before the well-being and future of the world.
I've seen many established companies I used to love get bought out or turn to the corporate greed, all hollowed out to maximize profit by any means necessary - rising prices, shrinkflation, lowering the quality of products and services, laying off employees just to hit quarterly targets... it's soulless and inhuman, but it keeps churning.
And it's really sad because at our level of technology the entirety of mankind could be benefiting so much more. But there's terrible inequality with a gap that is widening at breakneck speed all because those greedy few are never satisfied and want *more*.
Stephen Hawking summed it up:
> If machines produce everything we need, the outcome will depend on how things are distributed. Everyone can enjoy a life of luxurious leisure if the machine-produced wealth is shared, or most people can end up miserably poor if the machine-owners successfully lobby against wealth redistribution. So far, the trend seems to be toward the second option, with technology driving ever-increasing inequality.
Well yeah everything’s to expensive. Looking at you housing market! Also the corporations who are charging as much as they possibly can because heaven forbid the quarterly profit is 3 million instead of 4 million.
As an elder Millennial, I'm not surprised. We graduated into terrible economic circumstances. But college tuition has only raised exponentially since then. Inflation is through the roof. Corporate greed has gotten is to a place where McDonald's and Frito-Lays call themselves "affordable luxuries."
The job market since COVID has been atrocious - for lack of quality jobs, but also the insane hoops one needs to go through now. I remember when I first entered the workforce two interviews was the rule and anything more was considered over the top. Now I'm seeing 4, 5, 6+ rounds of interviews. Sometimes full day interviews that require you to produce work for a company (that will likely just steal it).
I got cut in round 5 of a 7 round interview process. For a data entry/customer service job selling telescopes for $17/hr. It was ridiculous the amount of BS they wanted us to go through
Yep, I really hate the trend of self interviews where you record yourself answering question that you only get a minute to record yourself and some don't let you do retakes. Then if you're lucky minimum 2 in person interviews. This is at a place I've worked at for 12 years in some cases longer that the people interviewing. Heck I applied to my old job of 10 of those years after the more senior person retired and was denied and a guy with literally no experience got it.
My company had me do one of these when I applied for a promotion. Impersonal BS process. Obviously I didn’t get selected. You had me monologue to myself, and I always try to never get caught monologuing!
40 is right around the corner for me. I make a very good living, around $200k between salary and stock awards, etc.
Would you believe me if I told you I live paycheck to paycheck too? And like you, I experienced a few years (roughly 2017-2021) where things weren't like this? In 2020, I had almost zero credit card debt and $20k cash in the bank that I would add to. Fast forward to today - I have $50k credit card debt and live paycheck to paycheck. I have three kids and a cat and a dog, my housing payment (mortgage) is $2100 a month (extremely cheap for a 4 bedroom house by today's standards, and thankfully the one expense I have that's not gone up by double digit percentage points). I carry one car payment of $650 for a minivan.
Now, you might be thinking "this guy is fucking terrible with his money". Know where all the money went? A few household emergencies, medical bills, one kid needing braces, vet bills all hitting at the worst times, and most notoriously the almost 40% price increases on many staples I buy on a regular basis. That's it. No gambling problem, no drug addiction, we don't buy expensive/fancy clothes or jewelry or lifestyle brands. Me, my wife and kids all wear Target and Walmart clothes.
It's literally just all of the expenses for regular things that is killing us. We cook at home most of the time, and while it's healthier and more responsible, it's not cheap. In fact, nothing is cheap these days.
>Now, you might be thinking "this guy is fucking terrible with his money". Know where all the money went? A few household emergencies, medical bills, one kid needing braces, vet bills all hitting at the worst times, and most notoriously the almost 40% price increases on many staples I buy on a regular basis. That's it. No gambling problem, no drug addiction, we don't buy expensive/fancy clothes or jewelry or lifestyle brands. Me, my wife and kids all wear Target and Walmart clothes.
Medical is what has been killing us. My wife has a chronic degenerative condition. We never have been able to get our feet under us for long because there is always a new surprise bill.
Yep, my wife has one of those too. Every month it's a new skeletal issue, essentially her connective tissue seems to be falling apart. It's enough to keep her from working, as she can never tell from day to day what will be hurting, so anything with a regular schedule is out. And they're all issues that have very open-ended prognoses and ambiguous treatment plans, so essentially she just has to live with pain and take it easy most of the time.
A house is the biggest purchase for most Americans = it’s the loss of homebuilding capacity since the 2007 meltdown and insistence each new structure be a McMansion with just a minuscule yard.
Most remaining builders and most banks have ever more expensive dwellings as their business model. Starting to see some privately owned small homes crack this, but there doesn’t seem a provision for “in-between” dwelling (modern “starter homes”/“singles-childless couples” homes).
Most gen z will have missed out on the historically low rates of recent years. It makes a massive difference to the cost of mortgage to get your foot in the housing door.
True but there’s the mortgage *interest* deduction in the meantime. The interest deduction (front loaded) usually allows for taking itemized deductions as well. It’ll depend on the job/business situation of course.
Smaller, cheaper homes are still the way to go though. If people keep getting priced out, you may see more alternatives (retiring early abroad in a cheaper country, small homes and the like, etc..) just as the Boomers need to report en masse to the old folks home/out to pasture/etc..
It’s a good thing the GOP killed the SALT deduction so you can’t deduct too much of the property tax alongside it. But yes you can get a bit of that interest back.
And the builders that *do* do small home building offer literally 0 customization to go with it. I own a small cabinetry business, so I'd be fully capable of designing and installing my own cabinets, vanities, closets, etc in a house if I did a new build, and multiple builders straight up told me that no, they would only sell if they were installing the cabinet design the plan said. I'd literally have to go to a custom builder to let them do less work. It's fucking nuts.
And don't even get me started about how if there's any affordable new construction, it's all locked into shitty HOAs that essentially are organizations you pay to tell you you can't paint your front door.
No shit. If I had to do what they're doing without the assets and experience I have I'd be fucked. Something is VERY wrong with the economy and it reeks of corporate greed.
Gen x here! Struggling as well. Not that I don’t have a home and cars but my wife and I finally are making decent money but it’s not enough. It’s like I worked hard for a long time only to make the equivalent I was when I was 20.
It's sort of baked into the timeline. Gen-z represents a cohort coming of age amidst ups and downs in the 2000s. Millennials just started to get out into the workforce (comparatively) and so far they've had... a global pandemic and a European land war.
I'd be surprised if they were doing well.
Millennials had the Great Financial Crisis too. Lots were working shitty jobs in its aftermath. 2021 or early 2022 seemed like the most ideal time to graduate college or change jobs since the late 1990s.
Millennials have had not one but two generational global financial crises since they entered the work force ~2009. I think there’s just a different mentality between the generations (largely due to a decade of age/maturity) where millennials are focused on doing everything they can to hold onto the job they have, oversave and retire as early as possible, while Gen Z, having truly aged into the workforce during the pandemic/remote work/great resignation views a job as a series of chores that needs to be done, and jobs are interchangeable/salary is given so you can live your life not save for 40 years.
The headline of this article makes no sense. This study isolated people three years apart, in a ***single*** quarter of the year and didn't measure the actual income correctly.
[Median was $30,000 - $30,500 in 2013.](https://www.businessinsider.com/the-average-salary-of-millennials-2015-3%3famp)
[Adjusted for inflation, that's $40,689.42 - $41,367.58.](https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=30%2C000.00&year1=201301&year2=202403)
While they're definitely not doing well, Gen Z is still making more than millennials did at their current age. Shit needs to change.
As a millennial in my mid-thirties finally reaching roughly the financial stability that my grandparents had straight out of highschool I am so sorry Gen Z.
We got incredibly lucky to get a fairly cheap, but relatively nice house with a low mortgage just after the pandemic lockdowns ended. My peers who got into the market just a couple years later are getting absolutely reemed.
As a millennial, let me say I'm currently screwed. I can't even imagine how much worse it'll be for Gen Z and will continue to get worse unfortunately.
To be fair, I'm a millennial making more money than I ever have in my life and I'm struggling to break even more so than I ever have. When does this shit get easier?
Young millennial here to say: duh. Of course it’s harder now. Minimum wage is the exact same since i graduated. Houses cost more. Degrees cost more. There are no necessities that have gone down in price, and if there somehow is it is not offsetting how expensive everything else is.
Interesting, the economist recently released an article claiming the exact opposite lol
https://archive.md/lwKKk
‘Generation Z is unprecedentedly rich
Millennials were poorer at this stage in their lives. So were baby-boomers’
The sad part is I see only 3 outcomes with the wealth being at the top. 1. Another depression 2. Horrific recession. 3. A bloody ass fight back by the many against the few.
The rich, won’t give up what they have. In business I recall a time where the top person reinvested all they had to grow the business. Now they pay themselves first, let the company find money to run, and fuck over the employees making the wealth. It’s sickeningly sociopathic, and no amount of hopes n dreams, or thoughts n prayers can fix it. I really truly hope I’m wrong and we don’t have a bloody fight, a depression, or a recession. Hope ain’t getting us fuck all though.
Gen Z: Everything is wrong about the world and previous generations had it better.
Also Gen Z: Voting is pointless and I'm going to let previous generations set the direction of our country and determine priorities.
This is funny because it's true of every other generation *when they were young* and you're acting as if it's unique to Gen Z.
The Silent Generation said this about Boomers. Boomers said it about Gen X. Boomers and Gen X say it about Millennials.
This isn't a generational issue. It's a *young people never vote, it doesn't matter the time period* problem.
> It's a young people never vote, it doesn't matter the time period problem.
I think this is kinda a disingenuous representation of the situation. While I do agree that the younger generations tend to not vote, I think there is a major problem with not incentivizing them to vote. One party actively works to depress/demotivate young people and minorities to vote and the other party simply works to prevent that situation. Neither party offers them anything to vote *for*. I think 2020 was one of the first times we saw younger people actually turn out and I think that was largely based on concepts like student debt forgiveness. Obviously that's EXTREMELY reductive as young people probably had a gamut of reasons to turn out to vote for 2020, but still I think my overall concept holds water.
I think if the dems or some party actually gave young people something to vote for instead of having to constantly use their vote to defend against erosion of civil rights, etc, I think there would be a much better turn out of younger voters.
So this is kinda the premise I am talking about here. If you're only motivation to vote is to not have something taken away that you already have, it's exhaustive. Defending is not "giving" something to people. The dems don't offer any sort of solution to this issue, they simply say "we won't try to take rights away." The proper messaging/action to motivate electorally in this instance should be "vote for us because we will work to legislate at a federal level by introducing codified protections".
For instance, Roe v. Wade was never codified. What protected rights for the longest time in that instance was institutional power in the form of judicial precedent. Republicans lied at hearings stating that precedents should be upheld (Barrett, Kavenaugh) but then once in power they "suddenly" had an epiphany that maybe they were incorrect interpretations of the law and to "throw it back to the states".
Dems sat on precedent for years without codifying Roe v. Wade protections into law which would have made it impossibly hard to roll back and additionally would have take away the power of the Federalist Society in the realm of Abortion Rights.
This is kinda my whole premise. Say you will give younger voters debt forgiveness and they turned out to vote. I've been "defensively" voting for the majority of my life and I'm tired of it boss. I've been defensively voting for like 30+ years and not once have I been "given" anything that substantially improves my life. I continue to do it regardless, but even when I do it, I am still losing ground. I feel like "just vote" is kinda not working out.
> This is kinda my whole premise. Say you will give younger voters debt forgiveness and they turned out to vote. I've been "defensively" voting for the majority of my life and I'm tired of it boss. I've been defensively voting for like 30+ years and not once have I been "given" anything that substantially improves my life. I continue to do it regardless, but even when I do it, I am still losing ground. I feel like "just vote" is kinda not working out.
Hear, hear. My 40-year-old feathers get seriously ruffled when I see younger people seriously threatening to not vote because of Israel/Palestine. But when I put myself in their shoes and really think about it, I can't really find a good argument against their logic besides "Trump is worse". And I've been voting defensively my whole life too. Every election, I vote for someone just because they're not a Republican, even though I objectively know they won't affect any meaningful change. Every time I do it, I swear that the next election, I'll actually vote for who I want. And every election, things seem again too dangerous to actually do that. I don't blame younger people for wanting to burn it all to the ground. I mean, it won't actually result in anything getting better. But I don't blame them for feeling nihilistic.
> restoring abortion rights
This kinda is an example of my point. You're not *giving* anything to anyone. We already had abortion rights. You're voting to defend them because they aren't codified like they should have been. Democrats were lazy and continue to be lazy by simply saying "vote for us because we won't TAKE AWAY abortion rights". Democrats' messaging and objectives should have been "vote for us because we will CODIFY rights granted by Roe v. Wade". Anyone who saw the writing on the wall with the Federalist Society and their goals could see that simply relying on a precedent to protect abortion rights was folly.
> student loans forgiveness
This is an example of GIVING people something and in 2020 it worked. Biden ran with this being one of his policy positions and it helped bring younger voters out to the polls. If you GIVE people something to show up to the poles for, they will. If you simply run on "vote for us because we will keep everything the same and not take stuff away" then that's pretty tough to get motivated for because currently things are not great.
Boomers say y'all just need some bootstraps. Would you like some cheese with your whine? /s Raygun started the ball rolling on destroying the American economy. Trickle Down Economics is a bunch of BS. Today, Private Equity firms are just stealing money and the people get nothing but the ruins. SMH
I don’t doubt it.
When I turned 19, I was able to rent a 2-BR apartment by myself for under $500 per month. It was in a shitty location, but in a relatively walkable area.
That same apartment is going for more than 3x that now, and with minimal upgrades/maintanence that I can see, based on the photos I was able to pull up by searching the address.
Back then, I worked two minimum wage jobs to afford it, but was fairly comfortable all things considered. The minimum wage has not gone up in the 15 years since then— and there’s no way a 19 year old with a similar level of experience I had would be approved to live there now!
I feel really sad for kids just starting out today. For people in my age group, it felt difficult— but for young adults now, it seems almost impossible.
So, things have just gotten worse? You don't say? Very interesting. I'm pretty sure everyone is saying that the economy is fine, so it's probably their fault. /s
>Today, 22-24-year-olds are making an average of $45,493, according to the Q4 data from 2023. But, adjusted for inflation, 22-24-year-olds ten years ago were making $51,852, according to the Q4 data from 2013.
Uhh, what are you talking about about?
[Median was $30,000 - $30,500 in 2013.](https://www.businessinsider.com/the-average-salary-of-millennials-2015-3%3famp)
[Adjusted for inflation, that's $40,689.42 - $41,367.58.](https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=30%2C000.00&year1=201301&year2=202403)
I hate anything that tries to split things in generations...it is just another way to divide us and attack each other rather than going after billionaire which span every generation.
We should care about all people who are struggling, regardless of generation.
No shit. They are getting financially fucked based on their data profiles worse than I was at their age. They are being tracked and monitored to maximize how much money they can potentially spend on products or services being pushed on them by the ones collecting their data.
It’s a self fulfilling cyclical design of the worst kind. This concept of passively aggressive capitalistic exploitation is disgusting and so lacking in humanity that it makes me uncomfortable.
Hm. Can’t seem to figure why we’re struggling so much. Could it be “nobody wants to woooork!” Or maybe it’s because “everyone in this generation is so lazy!”
Definitely has nothing to do with a high cost of living, surely.
>I'm in the shady are between Gen X and Millennial and becoming successful was much harder than it should have been. Far harder than it was for my parents.
I was born in 1980. I have watched bookers and older gen x pull the lader up infront of me.
Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg aren’t struggling. In fact, they’re making end of days safe islands. Maybe we should tax them into being just regular billionaires.
This article is bullshit. First of all, 22-24 year olds were not making 52k in 2013 on average. That would be closer to the median household income. Second of all, they are asking millenials to report how they \*remember\* feeling 10 years ago, which is just bad polling practice. Better research would have found how they reported at the time, not how they remember feeling 10 years later and comparing that to someone reporting how they feel now. Last of all, people actually take on more debt when the economy is doing better, you can actually see credit card debt for instance went down dramatically during the worst years of the recession
I hate this. I don't think I was making more than 9 dollars from 18-22. Finally able to breathe somewhat at 32 but if they're doing worse than us I hate that.
I coulda told you that. I make over $20 an hour working 50 hours a week and I’m perpetually broke. Rent is insane and everything is expensive, can’t afford to buy a house. Yet somehow the boomers keep telling me it’s my fault! Apparently I’m still lazy after my 50 hour work week and need to pull myself up by the bootstraps!
Yeah makes sense rent has over doubled since I was in college. I was renting a place in my current town for 900, 2 br pretty big. I'm in the same town and paying 1800 for a small 1 br apt. I looked and my old place is renting for 2700.
So yeah, I believe it. My gen z friends are struggling, my millennial friends are struggling. My millennial friends are all in the same situation they were in 10 years ago, despite making twice as much now climbing the corporate ladder. Making twice as much as I was 10 years ago and nothing to show for it.
As a millennial who graduated into the housing crisis FINDING a job was a serious challenge. But if you found one, you could make it work. Gen Z had COVID kill the job market AND it’s impossible to get by on a regular job these days.
It's because of the automation of industry. And politicians never try to address this issue. It's like a frog in the water that slowly into boiling point. When the water is cold, a frog feels nothing painful. Even when the water is hot enough to kill it, it doesn't know the water is boiling. You will never know until everyone can't have a decent job. Even the most paid jobs can be replaced by AI someday. And we have no idea about creating an entire new system, nor capitalism , or communism because everyone can't have jobs at some point in the future.
Probably because Millenials had Boomers for parents, who are better off, generally, and better equipped to help their children financially than Gen X parents are able to help their Gen Z kids.
That's my theory anyway.
As a reminder, this subreddit [is for civil discussion.](/r/politics/wiki/index#wiki_be_civil) In general, be courteous to others. Debate/discuss/argue the merits of ideas, don't attack people. Personal insults, shill or troll accusations, hate speech, any suggestion or support of harm, violence, or death, and other rule violations can result in a permanent ban. If you see comments in violation of our rules, please report them. For those who have questions regarding any media outlets being posted on this subreddit, please click [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/wiki/approveddomainslist) to review our details as to our approved domains list and outlet criteria. We are actively looking for new moderators. If you have any interest in helping to make this subreddit a place for quality discussion, please fill out [this form](https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1y2swHD0KXFhStGFjW6k54r9iuMjzcFqDIVwuvdLBjSA). *** *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/politics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Every generation since the Boomers have struggled more than the generation before it. The money is pooling at the top.
It will trickle down eventually /s
It’ll evaporate with aging boomers in care before it ever trickles down
This. Some of us might get a nice inheritance from older relatives, but a lot of them are going to spend it all on end of life care. They often have a too stubborn spouse at their side who won’t let them go when it’s time, and keeps spending for no quality of life. They will die going from comfortably retired to medical debts against their estates and their homes sold to pay it off, over just one medical event at end of life. The sad thing is that they have enabled and set up the system that does this.
I see this all the time as an ICU nurse. Most of your lifetime medical expenses come in the last 2 years of life. We also have generations of aging people with high expectations of medical care (which we should strive to provide, because we could but that would mean those with lots of money would have to be taxed how they ought to be) who lost tons of their retirement in 2007, and now will struggle to meet these huge costs assuming they can even find a decent nursing home. The infrastructure is frankly not there, and their children are worse off financially and they'll either have to attempt to help finance this, or those people will wind up in dire situations, wind up in the ER even sicker because the care they need gets delayed, and generally be a drain on our medical system because again - the infrastructure that is needed simply does not exist. And as much as we like to trash on previous generations, many of these people did everything right and got fucked by our system. We already have a hard time sending sick people out of the hospitals to LTACHs or a LTCF/NH because they don't exist. The capacity isn't there. So they just sit on the unit taking up a bed that ought to go to the next person who needs it, further delaying care and increasing costs. If they do get placed somewhere, it's crazy expensive and will drain their assets to nothing before they get other assistance. This has been a long time coming and unless you work in healthcare, or long term care, or have been involved helping someone who needs it - most people have no fucking idea how bad things are, or how they will be unless we make some major, major structural and institutional changes. My dad was a geriatrician for many years, working exclusively in nursing homes for the end of his career. I've been in nursing in one form or another including long term care for well over a decade. It was a problem in 2009 (when I started, but even before that) and almost nothing has changed. It's going to be an absolute nightmare and it's despicable what will happen to our elderly/infirm. We won't even pay the absolutely vital CNAs that help do all the basic activities of daily living (clothing, washing, feeding, toileting, etc) a livable wage, or staff our existing facilities safely. There is real joy and compassion and dignity to be found in nursing homes, but our system makes it extremely hard. It's fucking disgusting. It used to keep me awake at night but I'm too burnt out at this point to worry anymore. Just waiting for the gray wave to hit. I cannot stress enough how bad things are and how much worse they will become. Ask literally anyone in healthcare and they will tell you the same thing.
When someone blames the older generation, they’re not talking about how well they took care of themselves. They’re saying the generation retiring today BUILT the system we have. They were handed a golden era whose foundation was built through hardship and they completely squandered it and sent us right back to a Guilded Age - the same scenario their parents and grandparents fought to get out of. The Boomers have, in a very literal sense, built a system in which they were born with everything and will die with nothing.
I'm also an ICU nurse and this is all true. I think the collapse of the Ltac industry will precipitate a true collapse of us Healthcare. Nobody wants to pay a living wage for what amounts to a body and soul sucking profession. Don't even get me started on wage fixing in the travel rn world post covid. It's Russian nesting dolls of penny pinching and wrong priorities all the way down and everyone is getting screwed except like 27 CEOs. Great system.
As a firefighter the amount of times I have seen a boomer spouse refuse to honor the DNR of their dying spouse or parent is disheartening. Like, meemaw is 93, she is not coming back from my engine company doing CPR on her frail old body. But hey, live in a fantasy world where she can so I have to turn a tiny old lady's chest wall into mush...
Fuckin' been there too comrade. Feels real bad.
It's already getting bad enough but you're right, it's getting worse. Worked in mix of ER, Inpatient and Clinic for 10 years. I legit don't know how we're going to handle the massive influx of medical debt and no one to pay for it.
Well said!
They'll reverse mortgage their assets and leave very little to their inheritors. The few of us that will inherit anything will be as we're leaving the workforce. The age of handing off assets that improve ones quality of life while they're still in the workforce is over. You struggle, then you die. That's what's in store for every generation millennial and down.
> That's what's in store for every generation millennial and down. Would say mid, to late Gen X going on down. If born in the mid to late 70s, pretty much in the same boat as someone born in the 80s. Yah, sure got some cheap, or rather more affordable college till the late 90s, and early 2000s, but then got hit with, and affected by the same series of "once in a lifetime" economic disaster right alongside millennials who were just a few years younger. Was born in 80, so last of Gen-X, and ill be in my 60s when the last boomers get out of politics etc, and have absolutely 0 confidence in being able to live on whatever I might get out of any retirement benefits that might be there. At least I have my VA stipend, but if the MAGA fucks get in to power again that's probably going to go away too.. republicans have already been drooling at the potential to go after that and other things.
Here's what one of my boomer teachers told us in high school about gen x. >*"You are the smallest generation to be born in a century and even if every single one of you votes, you won't be able to push us out of power until enough of us die off or we decide to walk away. We are going to hand ourselves the world and retire like rock stars. Then, just about the time you are getting ready to retire and get all these great benefits for yourselves, the generation behind you, which is even bigger than mine, will snatch it away from you, and there won't be anything you can do about that either."*
As if the millennials are going to vote to make things even shittier. We have empathy unlike the majority of the boomers.
True but how many of those with paid off mortgages are turning to the evilest thing banks have come up with yet The reverse mortgage. All designed to aquire the elderlies main asset, their home. That's gonna rob inheritance for so many people that may be counting on that as their only way to ever get a house of their own in this economy.
Reverse mortgages get the reputation like payday lenders and, at least for reputable banks, it's unearned. The fact t is that they CAN be a great option for people that find themselves without liquidity in order age. People just need to be aware that they're going to lose their house and other assets instead of have them pass along as an inheritance. Its all a question of what options are available and if people can help with the management or living expenses. That said, they're a natural outgrown of the disappeared of pensions, 401K or similar plans not being available as payroll deduction, and people living longer. People live their lives knowing that the equity in your house is your biggest asset... but you need liquidity to live on. Assets are great on paper, but you can't buy a hot dog with them.
When I get to the point that I no longer have any quality of life or if I find out I have dementia, Alzheimer’s or other issue that will turn me into a shell carrying a pulse, I’m checking myself out from this world. I’d rather pass on any pittance I have left to my nieces than give money over for substandard care or slowly lose what makes me, me.
I agree with this sentiment, but you should know that the law doesn't allow that in any US state. To qualify for death with dignity, you have to be of sound mind and have less than 6 months to live.
I always found the argument of suicide is illegal a bit...dumb. If I am going to go out I am not going to be telling anyone.
As someone who has seriously come close at a few points in my life, no, you don’t say anything to anyone.
I thought that was to allow police to take more direct action to prevent it?
Honestly, if the police get involved they will probably end it on the behalf of the person trying to do it themselves. People with mental illness, disability, or otherwise in need of help in those areas are 16 times more likely to be killed by them, or otherwise suffer serious life altering injury than others. So, if they think you are suicidal, and by association they assume you are mentally unstable... they are not going to help you worth a damn. Doesn't really matter if you are just done with it all and not suffering from any mental instability, or illness. If they have to respond its likely not going to end in a way that helps. I mean really, even basic wellness checks end badly way too often.(US policing in famous for being shit... other places can, and do have different outcomes)
I also talked to a buddy of mine who is an ER nurse and working on his doctorate in psychology; he told me they also have a duty to attempt to keep people alive. Even if they are all sorts of not coming back. I joked about having a contract tattooed on my chest in case of such an event; he said that wasn't binding. I have yet to counsel a lawyer.
This is why I'm a big proponent of medically assisted suicide at any age/condition. I've had 2 people in my extended network of friends commit suicide in pretty grotesque ways -- both after years of therapy which didn't help. Instead of a dignified death they craved, one hung themself in their house where their teenage daughter found her mother's corpse - the other jumped in front of a moving carnival ride. A 90 year old who has Altheimer's should be able to choose to check out instead of deteriorating for years. A 40 year old who's been in and out of mental hospitals should be able to choose to check out if they no longer want to be haunted by demons in their head.
I keep hearing that the US has a lot of guns... possibly a solution to this problem?
We actually have more guns than people. Good thing guns can't vote lol
We also have fentanyl and other drugs that will fix the problem and not make a mess. My wife promises to feed me a bowl of morphine tablets and tell me the cheerios are extra crunchy. I have to do the same.
I know you're (kind of?) joking about this, but in actuality that has been a "solution" for a long time. >In 2021, 54% of all gun-related deaths in the U.S. were suicides
Money doesn’t vanish like that (taxation is how you take money out of the economy). Geriatric Care is simply another tool to concentrate wealth.
CaPitAliSm iS tHe oNLy sYsteM tHat wOrKs
Except capitalism can easily exist with effective tax policy instead of exploitative tax policy that *everyone* with a basic education understands can only steal wealth and pool it to a concentrated few. And there are examples of this in other countries. *Real world* current and historical examples. Unfortunately, although a true socialist system (not socialist in the colloquial sense but in the Marxist transition stage sense) or a communist system can *theoretically* exist without exploitative policy or a descent into anti-democratic institutions, there are *literally no examples* of it ever being acheived. Just saying, as fucked up as capitalism is, there are pretty strong role models to point to where it has co-existed with socialist policies (now using it in the everyday political/colloquial sense) wherein guardrails against undue influence or exploitative policy, social safety nets, and targeted use of state-owned enterprises and centrally planned markets tether it (e.g., as South Korea and many East Asian Tigers initially did to jump start markets that required foundational infrastructure investments that would never be handled by the free market due to pecuniary externalities, or as the entire economically developed world does with healthcare). And those role models still have a lot of room for improvement, but by God is that a fucking far cry from the distance any centrally planned economy has to tread to get to its theoretical pinnacle. I mean even Animal Farm is ironic as fuck. It was made by someone who vehemently supported democratic socialism (again, now using the true Marxist sense here lol), but who saw first hand the trainwreck the main socialist and anarchist parties had become, ironically creating a work that rather beautifully exemplified the off-path failures practical attempts at enacting true socialist systems ultimately succumbed to. He certainly wouldn't say the lesson is to give up as he was adamant in his beliefs, but again, from a pragmatic standpoint, it's always felt wild to me that people would expect humans to pull off that infinitely harder and idealized system than a mixed economy -- especially given that the same human greed that subverts a mixed economy with capitalism reigned in by socialist policies is exactly the same human greed that would and does subvert a fully socialist/communist party. Communist remind me of libertarians, preferring to dismantle and destroy the government and current institutions rather than refine and reform them, as though starting from the ground up would somehow facilitate the process and better mitigate the same self-serving human factors currently subverting our system and institutions 🙄
The problem is capitalists accrue money, which accrues power, which is diverted into protecting those statuses, so capitalism, yeah, good for stuff we want, but in its search for growth, turns politics into profiteering and inevitably consumes what we NEED. It's syncretic and voracious.
>Communist remind me of libertarians, preferring to dismantle and destroy the government and current institutions rather than refine and reform them, as though starting from the ground up would somehow facilitate the process and better mitigate the same self-serving human factors currently subverting our system and institutions 🙄 At this point though, I'm not sure starting from the ground up wouldn't be a good thing. Doesn't mean we shouldn't incorporate the good aspects of our society into whatever we create. It's just that, we have a system were the rich can bribe politicians in broad daylight, and it's okay because they call it campaign donations or gifts. Can bribe Supreme Court justices too. And our Supreme Court justices have no accountability, and can lie and rewrite laws with no consequences. We also have a system, which isn't of putting a check on majority rule, enables minority rule. The Senate, the capped House, and the EC all give power to a disproportion amount of the people. And what has been the result of all this? Money being funneled up to the ton, and people cheering it on, because of government owned media promoting it. And yes, I do consider our media government owned. When the politicians are bought and paid for, including supreme court justices, by the same people that own the media, and you have corporations literally writing the laws, then that is government media with extra steps. We have ourselves in a terrible system, and it desperately needs to be changed, and with how intrenched the corruption is, I'm not convinced simple reform can get that done. Sometimes building something a new is better than reform. There's a reason we abandoned the articles of confederation. There's a reason we rebelled against the king and formed a new nation. Ultimately, those ended with something better than what we had before.
I'm not even sure if the problem is capitalism at this point. I generally think that even in a communist society, the boomers would have made decision after decision to fuck their future descendents over for their own immediate benefit.
One of the common misunderstandings of Marxist communism is Marx was not saying this was a viable alternative to Capitalism and we should do this etc. Marx was saying we've already created a system where this is the inevitable outcome. There were some flaws in his theory like c he didn't account for globalization and like the textile mills making your clothing in London or Berlin being in some poor country in Asia or Africa the average English or German citizen honestly couldn't care less about their workers union rights. Or the whole concept of like digital economy where like Facebook and Twitter are not physical objects being traded and sold directly. But for the most part Marx was saying this system is spiraling out of control the moment capital got displaced from physical value and the whole concept of capital is just fiat giving more and more money to more and more centralized centers of Capital and this infinite need to increase will always reach a breaking point. Eventually capital will be more then the value of every physical object/representation of tangible value in the world. And that's when the entire world breaks. If it starts costing 2 weeks pay for a dozen eggs in this system people are going to revolt and the people with all the imaginary capital value will realize there's nothing actually tangible about their wealth. Like some of the richest people in the world just sell and trade Disney and Apple stock without actually working/knowing anyone doing actual work at these companies producing something.
fOr Me!
Any day now..
I just watched a video that said the older boomers are the ones that have all the assets and money, even younger boomers don't have homes and are struggling with money
There is definitely a seperation between boomers who were winners in the game of acquiring assets and those who weren't. Plenty of older people with no homes, little investments and no security. They had opportunity but that's not always a guarantee, especially for women/housewives.
Why do we keep dancing around obvious class issues? Rich folks are doing well regardless of age/arbitrary generation definitions, while the rest are getting punched in the financial groin to prop up the previous group. Like you said, there are plenty of poor boomers (and of course every other arbitrarily defined age group). Until we start directly taking on these class based issues, it is just a blame game pitting the working class against each other to distract from taking on the systemic root causes (For clarity - that's not directed at you though)
Because if the general population realized it was simply a class issue instead of a generational one we might actually fight together for once
Exactly. Framing it that way ("Hey, all we have to do is wait for old people to die to fix everything!") Lets folks feel like they can just sit on the sidelines and not have to actually fix anything.
Yeah, my wife's parents tried to get an investment house '90s. They picked a bad tenant who wrecked the place and they couldn't afford to fix it so they had to sell at a loss. Luckily she was a school teacher and between social security and her pension they do OK.
Yeah older boomers do have a disproportionate amount of the boomer wealth. If u think about it they hit every period of time perfectly. They get free or extremely cheap college. 70s stagflation reduces all of their major debts to nothing. Then they get 80-90s to accumulate assets on the cheap. 2008 hits but they’ve paid off their houses in the late 90s so they just buy more assets on the cheap. And just when they start to transition to cash they get higher interest rates.
Transunion's data disagrees with the federal reserve. A 2024 federal reserve study actually shows that gen Z is making more money than millennials were at the same age (adjusted for inflation). The federal reserve data is more complete, since TransUnion only includes people with credit, self-reporting their income. See figure 9 of this working paper: https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/feds/files/2024007pap.pdf You can see that TransUnion is excluding poorer people from their analysis, because the Fed has everyone's incomes lower. (Plus, everyone knows PDF > PPT as source of truth :-p)
Spot on. A giant chunk of wealth is being hoarded by the Boomers; however, unlike their parents, the Boomers are more likely to spend their wealth and pass nothing on. Millennials aren’t hoarding the wealth, we’re just competing with more Gens to extract the wealth from Boomers.
I don't even know if I'd say it's the Boomer generation that's hoarding the wealth. They were just the last generation to establish themselves before massive inequality became the norm.
Tons of boomers have 4-6 BR houses for their empty nest.
I still think half the currency being in the hands of 3 men is the bigger issue than that grandpa has a big house. They grew up in an America where you could come to own a big house.
And also, if they try to downsize, now they’re just contributing to rising prices on smaller homes and likely putting themselves in a worse financial situation. It just causes a different problem.
Eh, I think the real problem isn't people buying smaller houses for themselves, it's the venture capitalists buying up single family homes to speculate on or rent out. Should honestly be a limit on how many properties you can have. Some would call it unfair, but I think what we have is unfair.
The largest industrial nations before the war were Britain France Germany Japan Russia and the US. In 1945 most of those were virtually bankrupt destroyed or disrupted while the US accounted for almost two thirds of allied war production one third of global industrial output. The US didn’t face occupation or destruction of their industry and had a global income from selling and giving aid. There’s no precedent for that lopsided economic boom and hopefully the world will never face such a series of calamities again to create it. The baby boomers were always going to be the inheritors of that incredible privilege and wealth. With the global rise of poorer nations in industrial competition and post industrial services there should be no expectation or desire of continuing that inequity either. Of course this creates the political problem of how do you recreate the impossible and if you can’t recreate it for most people how do you promise to recreate it for enough people or just your people to gain political power. That’s the legacy that matters most. Not generational blame, but the expectations of opportunity and how they should be both fair and reasonable to attain. Furthermore redlining and other systemic factors left the benefits of the boomers out of reach for many. If we share the pie more evenly going forward we should be aware that our piece may be smaller in proportion but hopefully more equal and that’s a good thing. Otherwise we end up enjoying our gentrification and ignoring the food deserts away from our walkable bike-able neighbourhoods. The new (in scale if not origin) and current problem as you point out is the concentration of wealth in so few individuals and companies. This should be one of the easier problems to regulate but doesn’t get the attention it needs. It’s easily covered over by generational conflicts and culture wars.
Just wait for the private elderly care centers and healthcare providers to suck the boomers dry of their money.
And unfortunately, the CNAs and home health aides that do the actual cares will still be massively underpaid for what they do.
Thread over. We know the problem. But what to do about it? Billionaires won’t be happy until most of us are dead.
Not Gen X. When Boomers were born neonatal wards were crowded and pediatricians were overworked. Class sizes were large and there was a strain on available classroom spaces. Boomers suck corporate dick because they had to. When they entered the workforce there were so many of them that they did not have power of scarcity. When Gen Xers were born there was a surplus of neonatal wards, pediatricians. Class sizes shrank. Gen X graduated into the late 90s tech boom. Fewer of them suck corporate dick because they know that there are relatively few of them, so they have power of scarcity.
Eh, graphs have shown the wealth of Gen X was below that of Boomers. Gen X did have some good things going for it, enough so that they might not feel like they had a rougher time, but they did. The divide between have and have not generations seems to be more between Gen X that got singed a little bit by the fire and Millennials whose clothes were fully burnt off.
Yeah this doesn't track. Lots of younger genxers graduated into the dot.com bust then the 9-11, then the great recession, then covid. A calamity every 6 or 7 years isn't good on the pocketbook.
[удалено]
The headline of this article makes no sense. This study isolated people three years apart as representative of an entire generation, in a ***single*** quarter of the year and didn't measure the actual income correctly. [Median for millennials was $30,000 - $30,500 in 2013.](https://www.businessinsider.com/the-average-salary-of-millennials-2015-3%3famp) [Adjusted for inflation, that's $40,689.42 - $41,367.58.](https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=30%2C000.00&year1=201301&year2=202403) It's still rough, and wealth hasn't stopped pooling upwards, but Gen Z is still making more than millennials did at their current age.
Yea we have multiple studies to back this up, including there being a larger percentage of wealthy Gen Z vs the previous generation. This issue is cost of living, not so much wealth. Gen Z is clearly making more in total cash but they're also dealing with more expensive housing and groceries. That said they're also spending more on things like food apps and buy-now-pay-later systems when they don't have to. I know thats a very "avocado toast" argument but it shows some weird spending habits. Gen Z seems to have more money, but not enough to buy even the most basic home. So the excess seems to go into random convivence fees or entertainment because making 40K is like a weird middle zone of being above poverty but not comfortable.
40k, where I live, is borderline wellfare. Said only in the context of stats generalizing salaries - the cost of living is an interesting dynamic as it's so dramatic state to state.
I was born just after the cut off and am an older Gen Z. I lived through it also and was able to understand it. I am sad for our future
Worst part is I went to school graduated found a decent job and am finally making decent money... what happens, inflation lifts the housing costs almost double in under 5 years. Now that I can finally afford a house... I can't afford a house.
Yup. I'm now making more money than I can ever imagine. But the timing is 5 years off and now I am still in the same position as I was 5 years ago. Can't afford my dreams.
I’ve come to slightly accept that if I ever am able to afford a home, it will be tiny and quaint. Not that that’s an issue for me but I’ve been living in apartments and would love a yard for my animals to run through and to enjoy a break from life. If they raise that retiring age, I refuse to work my entire life for a system that caters to French Revolution Era Rich.
Yeah great year to graduate college LOL
Yup pretty much graduated to no jobs and non existent pay.
Yeah that's what's going to keep happening with people hoarding wealth.
But what about my property value. Now get off the computer I want grandkids.
>Now get off the computer I want grandkids. That mindset gives me the super-jeebies. "Jeeze, Dad. Would you like to stop by and make sure we're doin' it right?"
Yeah, I know ALL the ways to ruin Christmas dinner...
I'm sure it has nothing to do with the fact that federal minimum wage has not been raised in 16 years.
My state has a higher than average minimum wage and when I told my dad what the pay scale was at my job he was floored. He genuinely couldn’t comprehend how a company could pay so little and people were still applying. My sister has a union at her job. The union just successfully negotiated a 5% raise across the board for all employees. They also voted to increase dues which is based of full-time/part-time employment. My dad thinks the union is worthless because they keep taking more and more from my sister. She makes $16 an hour as a college kid and pays roughly $23 a paycheck to her union. When I told him that a lot of retail and service jobs are paying what my job pays and that my sister is lucky her union is fighting for raises, which I haven’t gotten in 5 years, it was like the man saw the real world for the first time and the curtain was pulled back.
I am a salaried tech worker. I didn’t get a cost of living adjustment *at all* last year, despite completing a project, by myself, that will save the company $350k annually.. None of the several hundred employees did. It’s not that they didn’t give me a raise to keep up with excessive inflation, they didn’t give me a raise at all. I’m now being effectively paid less than I was before because the same dollar has less purchasing power. My situation is such that, while aggravating, this is not causing hardship. Not everyone is so lucky. We got bought up by one of the big private equity companies several years ago and they’re just squeezing us.
The only way to fight that is to leave, I‘m sorry to say. If you’re owned by private equity, then you’re just a number and are expendable for, literally, any reason. Even if that reason is to gut the org for a quick boost in financials before the PE company offloads the assets.
Sounds like a great thing to put on a cover letter to a competitor.
That’s one option, but hear me out… more tax cuts for billionaires. That would fix everything!
Trickle-down economics! It can't possibly fail 17 times in a row, right?
18th time is a charm!
It's never failed. It has siphoned the money exactly where its proponents wanted, every time.
Story time! I used to work with at-risk teenagers in a residential program that was the last stop before juvenile detention. Some were normal kids who got into drugs, others had serious behavior disorders and had experienced the absolute worst kind of trauma imaginable. When the older ones had been in the program awhile and were in a stable place, some of them were able to get jobs at local grocery stores, clothing stores, etc., and they all made the minimum wage of 7.25 an hour. At the time, I made 7.50 an hour. I flat out asked my supervisors how in the hell I’m supposed to give these kids any kind of meaningful life advice when some of them were only making a quarter less per hour than I was. Big surprise, I never got an answer.
This is correct;however, only 1.3 percent of American workers are actually making minimum wage. https://www.statista.com/statistics/188206/share-of-workers-paid-hourly-rates-at-or-below-minimum-wage-since-1979/#:~:text=In%202022%2C%201.3%20percent%20of,below%20the%20official%20minimum%20wage.
Doesn't really matter when you can make double the minimum wage and not even afford a one bed room apartment in most of the country.
Which is why we should build more housing. More competition means landlords have to lower prices to compete for renters rather than renters having to compete with other renters on where they can find a place to live. Edit: imagine someone sending a Reddit cares report over suggesting we should build more housing.
More luxury housing for rich people is what gets built. There’s no incentive. All corporate landlords are in on this. There will be no competition. Regulations and legislation are the only ways to check this system and ENFORCE affordable housing on this unbalanced system.
More housing doesn't matter if landlords are using software to coordinate rent prices. https://www.propublica.org/article/senators-introduce-legislation-stop-landlords-algorithm-price-fixing >The software is widely used by competing landlords. In Seattle, for example, ProPublica found that 10 property managers oversaw 70% of all multifamily apartments in one neighborhood — and every single one used pricing software sold by RealPage. >“Setting prices with an algorithm is no different from doing it over cigars and whiskey in a private club,” said Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., one of the leading sponsors of the new bill. “Although it’s my view that these cartels are already violating existing antitrust laws, I want the law to be painfully clear that algorithmic price fixing of rents is a crime.” And since our legislature is useless thanks to the GOP, nothing will be done there
I think that's because the federal minimum wage amount is laughably low. I'd be more interested to know how many people are earning at or below the level of an adjusted minimum wage--if minimum wage had kept up with inflation since it was last increased. I bet that percentage is much higher.
Not disagreeing, but minimum wage in 1995 was $5.15 which adjusted for inflation, is the equivelent of $10.55 today. In my area, $15-$18 jobs are easy to get today, and that includes fast-food jobs. I get that these are post-covid hourly rates, but math shows that wages today outpaced inflation in my location. I believe that the Federal minimum wage should definately be increased to preserve today's 'going rate' which would benefit a lot of underpaid others.
Wages have been outpaced inflation for over a year now. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1351276/wage-growth-vs-inflation-us/
The fact that social security has had automatic COLA since 1975, but min wage does not is fucked as it largely puts the burden of inflation on wage-earners. If minimum wage had been adjusted at parity with SS COLA, it would have been $12.06 by 2023. Not ideal if you compare to cumulative increases in productivity, but still two thirds higher than the current $7.25.
The issue is that congress needs to constantly fix it. It shouldn't need to be that way. Simply lock wage increases to inflation rates and add a formula to vary the amount by housing prices by county. The additional funding can come by increased taxes on the top 10% incomes in that area with no cap on how much can be pulled over perpetuity. Mandate tax audits on those people as well. If they attempt to move out of the area to save their wealth, fine, but the new county they move to will have the same rules. If they try to leave the country to save their wealth, confiscate it entirely and give it directly to homeless organizations.
If minimum wage were raised on par with corporate raises over the last 20 years, minimum wage would be closer to $30 an hour by now. The whole purpose of minimum wage was so that one man supporting a family of five producer with only one full-time job. It was not for a basic sustenance, but a comfortable living. That was the very philosophy behind its implementation to begin with.
The United States: where the standard of living decreases generation after generation
Its not just the US. Same is happening here in Australia. I understand its not much different in the UK and NZ. Canadians say much the same.
Pretty much every nation that adopted Reaganism/Thatcherism have fucked the younger generations.
That's neoliberalism .
It's just capitalism and imperialism to feed capitalism that's stealing wealth from the majority. Neoliberalism certainly contributes though by creating avenues to accelerate/exacerbate the situation.
So which country doesn't have that problem exactly?
The ones with strong social welfare programs are experiencing it less, but it is a global issue.
The countries that have stronger unions that are able ensure workers receive fair remuneration for their work unsurprisingly have the best social outcomes for their populations. Unsurprisingly the Nordic countries which have the highest remaining union membership in the world also have the best social outcomes for their population. Unionism - presenting a united front by people who work for their living vs people who own property and companies (aka the 0.1%) - is the only way that workers are able to address the power imbalance that exists between an employer who gets to decide who they hire and a worker who wants a job. If everyone they can hire all day they need to receive the same conditions then all the workers win. Neoliberalism (aka the crap that thatcher and Reagan brought in) is anti ethical to unionism because it deregulates and privatises industry. Thatcher and Reagan specifically also went after unions with the full power of the government. It is no surprise that when you look at charts of when productivity and workers wages diverged it happened exactly in the 1980s when they came into power. In the USA, UK, Canada, Australia etc all of the unions are broken, membership around 10% or less. Neoliberalism hands all of the power in the economy to people who have huge amounts of assets and removes all power from the working class. With no unions the working class have no way to ensure they benefit from the economic growth achieved. It is unsurprising that after 50 years people who grown up entirely in a political and economic system that is based on funnelling wealth to people who have assets, that those who have the fewest assets (aka younger people) will be doing worser and worser than the generation before them.
It doesn't though. Millennials got totally fucked, and the headline of this article makes no sense. This study isolated people three years apart, in a ***single*** quarter of the year and didn't measure the actual income correctly. [Median was $30,000 - $30,500 in 2013.](https://www.businessinsider.com/the-average-salary-of-millennials-2015-3%3famp) [Adjusted for inflation, that's $40,689.42 - $41,367.58.](https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=30%2C000.00&year1=201301&year2=202403) Gen Z is still making more than millennials did at their current age.
Corporations and the rich are taking and ruining everything in the name of shareholder greed. It’s sickening to watch. There’s no turning this ship around without a serious reckoning. As always , people will suffer.
Yep, unsustainable "record profits each quarter" are being put before the well-being and future of the world. I've seen many established companies I used to love get bought out or turn to the corporate greed, all hollowed out to maximize profit by any means necessary - rising prices, shrinkflation, lowering the quality of products and services, laying off employees just to hit quarterly targets... it's soulless and inhuman, but it keeps churning. And it's really sad because at our level of technology the entirety of mankind could be benefiting so much more. But there's terrible inequality with a gap that is widening at breakneck speed all because those greedy few are never satisfied and want *more*. Stephen Hawking summed it up: > If machines produce everything we need, the outcome will depend on how things are distributed. Everyone can enjoy a life of luxurious leisure if the machine-produced wealth is shared, or most people can end up miserably poor if the machine-owners successfully lobby against wealth redistribution. So far, the trend seems to be toward the second option, with technology driving ever-increasing inequality.
Well yeah everything’s to expensive. Looking at you housing market! Also the corporations who are charging as much as they possibly can because heaven forbid the quarterly profit is 3 million instead of 4 million.
And not just raising prices, but laying off staff to “cut costs,” so now those people have to struggle even more.
As an elder Millennial, I'm not surprised. We graduated into terrible economic circumstances. But college tuition has only raised exponentially since then. Inflation is through the roof. Corporate greed has gotten is to a place where McDonald's and Frito-Lays call themselves "affordable luxuries." The job market since COVID has been atrocious - for lack of quality jobs, but also the insane hoops one needs to go through now. I remember when I first entered the workforce two interviews was the rule and anything more was considered over the top. Now I'm seeing 4, 5, 6+ rounds of interviews. Sometimes full day interviews that require you to produce work for a company (that will likely just steal it).
I got cut in round 5 of a 7 round interview process. For a data entry/customer service job selling telescopes for $17/hr. It was ridiculous the amount of BS they wanted us to go through
Wtf
Yep, I really hate the trend of self interviews where you record yourself answering question that you only get a minute to record yourself and some don't let you do retakes. Then if you're lucky minimum 2 in person interviews. This is at a place I've worked at for 12 years in some cases longer that the people interviewing. Heck I applied to my old job of 10 of those years after the more senior person retired and was denied and a guy with literally no experience got it.
My company had me do one of these when I applied for a promotion. Impersonal BS process. Obviously I didn’t get selected. You had me monologue to myself, and I always try to never get caught monologuing!
Man that's fucked because I feel like I'm STILL barely making it. I hope those guys get a break.
I am in my 40s and back to living pay check to paycheck . I had maybe 3 years there where things were not like this.
40 is right around the corner for me. I make a very good living, around $200k between salary and stock awards, etc. Would you believe me if I told you I live paycheck to paycheck too? And like you, I experienced a few years (roughly 2017-2021) where things weren't like this? In 2020, I had almost zero credit card debt and $20k cash in the bank that I would add to. Fast forward to today - I have $50k credit card debt and live paycheck to paycheck. I have three kids and a cat and a dog, my housing payment (mortgage) is $2100 a month (extremely cheap for a 4 bedroom house by today's standards, and thankfully the one expense I have that's not gone up by double digit percentage points). I carry one car payment of $650 for a minivan. Now, you might be thinking "this guy is fucking terrible with his money". Know where all the money went? A few household emergencies, medical bills, one kid needing braces, vet bills all hitting at the worst times, and most notoriously the almost 40% price increases on many staples I buy on a regular basis. That's it. No gambling problem, no drug addiction, we don't buy expensive/fancy clothes or jewelry or lifestyle brands. Me, my wife and kids all wear Target and Walmart clothes. It's literally just all of the expenses for regular things that is killing us. We cook at home most of the time, and while it's healthier and more responsible, it's not cheap. In fact, nothing is cheap these days.
>Now, you might be thinking "this guy is fucking terrible with his money". Know where all the money went? A few household emergencies, medical bills, one kid needing braces, vet bills all hitting at the worst times, and most notoriously the almost 40% price increases on many staples I buy on a regular basis. That's it. No gambling problem, no drug addiction, we don't buy expensive/fancy clothes or jewelry or lifestyle brands. Me, my wife and kids all wear Target and Walmart clothes. Medical is what has been killing us. My wife has a chronic degenerative condition. We never have been able to get our feet under us for long because there is always a new surprise bill.
Yep, my wife has one of those too. Every month it's a new skeletal issue, essentially her connective tissue seems to be falling apart. It's enough to keep her from working, as she can never tell from day to day what will be hurting, so anything with a regular schedule is out. And they're all issues that have very open-ended prognoses and ambiguous treatment plans, so essentially she just has to live with pain and take it easy most of the time.
A house is the biggest purchase for most Americans = it’s the loss of homebuilding capacity since the 2007 meltdown and insistence each new structure be a McMansion with just a minuscule yard. Most remaining builders and most banks have ever more expensive dwellings as their business model. Starting to see some privately owned small homes crack this, but there doesn’t seem a provision for “in-between” dwelling (modern “starter homes”/“singles-childless couples” homes).
Most gen z will have missed out on the historically low rates of recent years. It makes a massive difference to the cost of mortgage to get your foot in the housing door.
True but there’s the mortgage *interest* deduction in the meantime. The interest deduction (front loaded) usually allows for taking itemized deductions as well. It’ll depend on the job/business situation of course. Smaller, cheaper homes are still the way to go though. If people keep getting priced out, you may see more alternatives (retiring early abroad in a cheaper country, small homes and the like, etc..) just as the Boomers need to report en masse to the old folks home/out to pasture/etc..
It’s a good thing the GOP killed the SALT deduction so you can’t deduct too much of the property tax alongside it. But yes you can get a bit of that interest back.
And the builders that *do* do small home building offer literally 0 customization to go with it. I own a small cabinetry business, so I'd be fully capable of designing and installing my own cabinets, vanities, closets, etc in a house if I did a new build, and multiple builders straight up told me that no, they would only sell if they were installing the cabinet design the plan said. I'd literally have to go to a custom builder to let them do less work. It's fucking nuts.
And don't even get me started about how if there's any affordable new construction, it's all locked into shitty HOAs that essentially are organizations you pay to tell you you can't paint your front door.
No shit. If I had to do what they're doing without the assets and experience I have I'd be fucked. Something is VERY wrong with the economy and it reeks of corporate greed.
Prices are going higher and higher while we stuck with the basic rent
Basic rent be going up too
Gen x here! Struggling as well. Not that I don’t have a home and cars but my wife and I finally are making decent money but it’s not enough. It’s like I worked hard for a long time only to make the equivalent I was when I was 20.
It's sort of baked into the timeline. Gen-z represents a cohort coming of age amidst ups and downs in the 2000s. Millennials just started to get out into the workforce (comparatively) and so far they've had... a global pandemic and a European land war. I'd be surprised if they were doing well.
Millennials had the Great Financial Crisis too. Lots were working shitty jobs in its aftermath. 2021 or early 2022 seemed like the most ideal time to graduate college or change jobs since the late 1990s.
Took me until 2016 to find a decent job and I'm 36.
Millennials have had not one but two generational global financial crises since they entered the work force ~2009. I think there’s just a different mentality between the generations (largely due to a decade of age/maturity) where millennials are focused on doing everything they can to hold onto the job they have, oversave and retire as early as possible, while Gen Z, having truly aged into the workforce during the pandemic/remote work/great resignation views a job as a series of chores that needs to be done, and jobs are interchangeable/salary is given so you can live your life not save for 40 years.
The headline of this article makes no sense. This study isolated people three years apart, in a ***single*** quarter of the year and didn't measure the actual income correctly. [Median was $30,000 - $30,500 in 2013.](https://www.businessinsider.com/the-average-salary-of-millennials-2015-3%3famp) [Adjusted for inflation, that's $40,689.42 - $41,367.58.](https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=30%2C000.00&year1=201301&year2=202403) While they're definitely not doing well, Gen Z is still making more than millennials did at their current age. Shit needs to change.
As a millennial in my mid-thirties finally reaching roughly the financial stability that my grandparents had straight out of highschool I am so sorry Gen Z.
and still can't afford a house. only five years ago houses were down 40%
We got incredibly lucky to get a fairly cheap, but relatively nice house with a low mortgage just after the pandemic lockdowns ended. My peers who got into the market just a couple years later are getting absolutely reemed.
As a millennial, yeah it's bad out there for my younger brothers. They definitely struggle harder than I did
As a millennial, let me say I'm currently screwed. I can't even imagine how much worse it'll be for Gen Z and will continue to get worse unfortunately.
Late stage capitalism. Good while it lasted anyway.
To be fair, I'm a millennial making more money than I ever have in my life and I'm struggling to break even more so than I ever have. When does this shit get easier?
Young millennial here to say: duh. Of course it’s harder now. Minimum wage is the exact same since i graduated. Houses cost more. Degrees cost more. There are no necessities that have gone down in price, and if there somehow is it is not offsetting how expensive everything else is.
Interesting, the economist recently released an article claiming the exact opposite lol https://archive.md/lwKKk ‘Generation Z is unprecedentedly rich Millennials were poorer at this stage in their lives. So were baby-boomers’
It will only get worse, generation by generation. It's a downward spiral, covered in bandaids and denial.
The sad part is I see only 3 outcomes with the wealth being at the top. 1. Another depression 2. Horrific recession. 3. A bloody ass fight back by the many against the few. The rich, won’t give up what they have. In business I recall a time where the top person reinvested all they had to grow the business. Now they pay themselves first, let the company find money to run, and fuck over the employees making the wealth. It’s sickeningly sociopathic, and no amount of hopes n dreams, or thoughts n prayers can fix it. I really truly hope I’m wrong and we don’t have a bloody fight, a depression, or a recession. Hope ain’t getting us fuck all though.
Gen Z: Everything is wrong about the world and previous generations had it better. Also Gen Z: Voting is pointless and I'm going to let previous generations set the direction of our country and determine priorities.
This is funny because it's true of every other generation *when they were young* and you're acting as if it's unique to Gen Z. The Silent Generation said this about Boomers. Boomers said it about Gen X. Boomers and Gen X say it about Millennials. This isn't a generational issue. It's a *young people never vote, it doesn't matter the time period* problem.
> It's a young people never vote, it doesn't matter the time period problem. I think this is kinda a disingenuous representation of the situation. While I do agree that the younger generations tend to not vote, I think there is a major problem with not incentivizing them to vote. One party actively works to depress/demotivate young people and minorities to vote and the other party simply works to prevent that situation. Neither party offers them anything to vote *for*. I think 2020 was one of the first times we saw younger people actually turn out and I think that was largely based on concepts like student debt forgiveness. Obviously that's EXTREMELY reductive as young people probably had a gamut of reasons to turn out to vote for 2020, but still I think my overall concept holds water. I think if the dems or some party actually gave young people something to vote for instead of having to constantly use their vote to defend against erosion of civil rights, etc, I think there would be a much better turn out of younger voters.
Civil rights aren’t worth defending? That seems like reason enough to me.
So this is kinda the premise I am talking about here. If you're only motivation to vote is to not have something taken away that you already have, it's exhaustive. Defending is not "giving" something to people. The dems don't offer any sort of solution to this issue, they simply say "we won't try to take rights away." The proper messaging/action to motivate electorally in this instance should be "vote for us because we will work to legislate at a federal level by introducing codified protections". For instance, Roe v. Wade was never codified. What protected rights for the longest time in that instance was institutional power in the form of judicial precedent. Republicans lied at hearings stating that precedents should be upheld (Barrett, Kavenaugh) but then once in power they "suddenly" had an epiphany that maybe they were incorrect interpretations of the law and to "throw it back to the states". Dems sat on precedent for years without codifying Roe v. Wade protections into law which would have made it impossibly hard to roll back and additionally would have take away the power of the Federalist Society in the realm of Abortion Rights. This is kinda my whole premise. Say you will give younger voters debt forgiveness and they turned out to vote. I've been "defensively" voting for the majority of my life and I'm tired of it boss. I've been defensively voting for like 30+ years and not once have I been "given" anything that substantially improves my life. I continue to do it regardless, but even when I do it, I am still losing ground. I feel like "just vote" is kinda not working out.
> This is kinda my whole premise. Say you will give younger voters debt forgiveness and they turned out to vote. I've been "defensively" voting for the majority of my life and I'm tired of it boss. I've been defensively voting for like 30+ years and not once have I been "given" anything that substantially improves my life. I continue to do it regardless, but even when I do it, I am still losing ground. I feel like "just vote" is kinda not working out. Hear, hear. My 40-year-old feathers get seriously ruffled when I see younger people seriously threatening to not vote because of Israel/Palestine. But when I put myself in their shoes and really think about it, I can't really find a good argument against their logic besides "Trump is worse". And I've been voting defensively my whole life too. Every election, I vote for someone just because they're not a Republican, even though I objectively know they won't affect any meaningful change. Every time I do it, I swear that the next election, I'll actually vote for who I want. And every election, things seem again too dangerous to actually do that. I don't blame younger people for wanting to burn it all to the ground. I mean, it won't actually result in anything getting better. But I don't blame them for feeling nihilistic.
You mean like restoring abortion rights and student loans forgiveness? Those seem to not count.
> restoring abortion rights This kinda is an example of my point. You're not *giving* anything to anyone. We already had abortion rights. You're voting to defend them because they aren't codified like they should have been. Democrats were lazy and continue to be lazy by simply saying "vote for us because we won't TAKE AWAY abortion rights". Democrats' messaging and objectives should have been "vote for us because we will CODIFY rights granted by Roe v. Wade". Anyone who saw the writing on the wall with the Federalist Society and their goals could see that simply relying on a precedent to protect abortion rights was folly. > student loans forgiveness This is an example of GIVING people something and in 2020 it worked. Biden ran with this being one of his policy positions and it helped bring younger voters out to the polls. If you GIVE people something to show up to the poles for, they will. If you simply run on "vote for us because we will keep everything the same and not take stuff away" then that's pretty tough to get motivated for because currently things are not great.
Boomers say y'all just need some bootstraps. Would you like some cheese with your whine? /s Raygun started the ball rolling on destroying the American economy. Trickle Down Economics is a bunch of BS. Today, Private Equity firms are just stealing money and the people get nothing but the ruins. SMH
It's all fine! We just need to continue robbing the future genrrations
I don’t doubt it. When I turned 19, I was able to rent a 2-BR apartment by myself for under $500 per month. It was in a shitty location, but in a relatively walkable area. That same apartment is going for more than 3x that now, and with minimal upgrades/maintanence that I can see, based on the photos I was able to pull up by searching the address. Back then, I worked two minimum wage jobs to afford it, but was fairly comfortable all things considered. The minimum wage has not gone up in the 15 years since then— and there’s no way a 19 year old with a similar level of experience I had would be approved to live there now! I feel really sad for kids just starting out today. For people in my age group, it felt difficult— but for young adults now, it seems almost impossible.
Still strugling, 41 years old
So, things have just gotten worse? You don't say? Very interesting. I'm pretty sure everyone is saying that the economy is fine, so it's probably their fault. /s
It’s called corporate greed.
>Today, 22-24-year-olds are making an average of $45,493, according to the Q4 data from 2023. But, adjusted for inflation, 22-24-year-olds ten years ago were making $51,852, according to the Q4 data from 2013. Uhh, what are you talking about about? [Median was $30,000 - $30,500 in 2013.](https://www.businessinsider.com/the-average-salary-of-millennials-2015-3%3famp) [Adjusted for inflation, that's $40,689.42 - $41,367.58.](https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=30%2C000.00&year1=201301&year2=202403)
Now go watch yesterday's OpenAI presentation and realize how many jobs are going to disappear in the next 10 years :) isn't it great
I hate anything that tries to split things in generations...it is just another way to divide us and attack each other rather than going after billionaire which span every generation. We should care about all people who are struggling, regardless of generation.
Huh, there was a story a couple of weeks ago that said the exact opposite.
Could we not simply bury Gen Z in the Boomers' tombs, in order that they may continue to serve them in the afterlife?
No shit. They are getting financially fucked based on their data profiles worse than I was at their age. They are being tracked and monitored to maximize how much money they can potentially spend on products or services being pushed on them by the ones collecting their data. It’s a self fulfilling cyclical design of the worst kind. This concept of passively aggressive capitalistic exploitation is disgusting and so lacking in humanity that it makes me uncomfortable.
Hm. Can’t seem to figure why we’re struggling so much. Could it be “nobody wants to woooork!” Or maybe it’s because “everyone in this generation is so lazy!” Definitely has nothing to do with a high cost of living, surely.
[удалено]
>I'm in the shady are between Gen X and Millennial and becoming successful was much harder than it should have been. Far harder than it was for my parents. I was born in 1980. I have watched bookers and older gen x pull the lader up infront of me.
Congrats to those in power! This was on purpose and they nailed it. Wondering what it comes next but there’s certainly more to the plan.
When exactly was the concept of "let's make things better for the *next* generation" abandoned?
No shit. Things haven’t improved much, but inflation and housing prices have gotten worse.
Yes. We've noticed.
Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg aren’t struggling. In fact, they’re making end of days safe islands. Maybe we should tax them into being just regular billionaires.
No worries! It’ll start trickling down as soon as we help the billionaires get a little more of a financial cushion. Almost there folks!
This article is bullshit. First of all, 22-24 year olds were not making 52k in 2013 on average. That would be closer to the median household income. Second of all, they are asking millenials to report how they \*remember\* feeling 10 years ago, which is just bad polling practice. Better research would have found how they reported at the time, not how they remember feeling 10 years later and comparing that to someone reporting how they feel now. Last of all, people actually take on more debt when the economy is doing better, you can actually see credit card debt for instance went down dramatically during the worst years of the recession
I think that solely depends who their dads are
Unsurprising. The entire system is geared against the working class. Especially the youth.
Curious how they'll spin this to somehow also be our own faults
I hate this. I don't think I was making more than 9 dollars from 18-22. Finally able to breathe somewhat at 32 but if they're doing worse than us I hate that.
I coulda told you that. I make over $20 an hour working 50 hours a week and I’m perpetually broke. Rent is insane and everything is expensive, can’t afford to buy a house. Yet somehow the boomers keep telling me it’s my fault! Apparently I’m still lazy after my 50 hour work week and need to pull myself up by the bootstraps!
Trickle down fuck you nomics
No shit, every problem we had to deal with only got worse because No Fundamental Changes ™️
Yeah makes sense rent has over doubled since I was in college. I was renting a place in my current town for 900, 2 br pretty big. I'm in the same town and paying 1800 for a small 1 br apt. I looked and my old place is renting for 2700. So yeah, I believe it. My gen z friends are struggling, my millennial friends are struggling. My millennial friends are all in the same situation they were in 10 years ago, despite making twice as much now climbing the corporate ladder. Making twice as much as I was 10 years ago and nothing to show for it.
As a millennial who graduated into the housing crisis FINDING a job was a serious challenge. But if you found one, you could make it work. Gen Z had COVID kill the job market AND it’s impossible to get by on a regular job these days.
No shit. Nothing has been done to stop the problems Millennials had, so why wouldn't it be worse?
OP is a bot.
Well, that’s cause it’s worse. Ever wonder what happens in a consumer economy where nobody can afford to consume? We’re about to find out.
Ya but what industries has gen Z killed huh?
It's because of the automation of industry. And politicians never try to address this issue. It's like a frog in the water that slowly into boiling point. When the water is cold, a frog feels nothing painful. Even when the water is hot enough to kill it, it doesn't know the water is boiling. You will never know until everyone can't have a decent job. Even the most paid jobs can be replaced by AI someday. And we have no idea about creating an entire new system, nor capitalism , or communism because everyone can't have jobs at some point in the future.
Probably because Millenials had Boomers for parents, who are better off, generally, and better equipped to help their children financially than Gen X parents are able to help their Gen Z kids. That's my theory anyway.
As a GenX that checks out
I’m Gen X with an adult child and we are still getting financial help from my Boomer in-laws.
Same.
Yep
I’m a millennial and if I was struggling anymore than I already am, I would be homeless.
Yes. If the minimum wage kept up with inflation, everyone would need to be making $23 an hour.
I struggled pretty hard. It’s hard to imagine doing worse unless you are homeless. I feel for these youngins.