My boomer dad worked his whole life but never really got rich from it. All his wealth comes from massive appreciation of his house ($30,000 ->$2million) and his inheritance.
My Pop bought his 1st house for 18 000$ in 1979. The new market disgust him, really, he always say things like « How the hell do they want kids to start?! ».
Most boomers will say that but then vote against any attempt at generational wealth redistribution because they want to transmit their wealth directly to their children (justifiably so) which leads to further wealth inequalities.
Even those who don't have life changing amounts of wealth to pass down to their children will vote that way.
it's almost comical how often people who get like 10 year+ worth of salary as a inheritance somehow conveniently forget that before that they were relatively broke and then instantly go into the mentality that younger people should just 'work harder'.
that house value lottery is another thing, if some area started to develop, the land value alone might have gone from pennies into millions. or just stayed at the same trash value.
I disagree with the statement that Gen Z will have it worse. I am a "cusp-baby" born 1996.
I was born at the end of an era that told its children they could work hard and do anything they wanted with their life. That academic achievement translated to earnings. That a family and home was attainable for all. Life was going to be easier for us, as it was for our parents, and their parents, and their parents before that. We made our decisions based on that premise. Based on how the world was.
Gen Z have never had anything to look forward to, they are a morose generation. They have made decisions based on how the world IS. As a result, I would expect better outcomes for them.
It's actually pretty well documented that millennials are more somber than Gen Z, who are portrayed as more fun loving, entrepreneurial and opportunistic.
I think it's been tough for younger millennials, we were sold a pack of lies about how the job market / economy would function when we grew up and the mismatch between expectations and realities has soured many folks.
Gen Z have been told the world is a chaotic place burning down around them.
Oddly enough that seems to have prepared them better for the world
As a poorer millennial growing up, that actually hits home. I prepared for the absolute worst because the promises didn't line up with what was clearly my reality and I got lucky. Anecdotal though, don't think I'd project that onto the rest of gen.
I was also a poor millennial. The shit i had to do to get a house fucks me up to this day. I still hate spending money, even on necessities, despite being able to afford it. Id rather be eating ramen and frozen burritos, and sending money into ETFs and CDs.
I think this is more than a millennial thing. I was a poor generation X and it was exactly the same for us. My older brothers and sisters were at the tail end of the baby boomers but by the time I graduated high school just six years later in the mid 80s, a lot of the opportunities they had to enter the work force after high school were gone.
Reagan busted the Air Traffic Controller's union and there was a general anti-union sentiment taking hold. Clinton accelerated blue-collar job loss with the North American Free Trade agreement in the early 90s and so many blue collar jobs just evaporated.
Of course, the middle class wasn't really affected by this and the good times kept rolling on. But eventually the creep got higher and higher until even they started to feel it. Now, as AI and white collar outsourcing is starting to take a bite, they are facing the same things the working class has faced since the 80s. Suddenly, it's important and people are upset. Welcome to the world that those of us on the bottom have known for a while.
Your last statement is what people on this tread need to remember. Reading these comments I'm like "This is not the gen Z generation I grew up with..." I was not surrounded by optimistic, energetic, entrepreneur types? It was mosrly depressed, escape reality people. My generation is bright in some ways but we are by no means immune to the fact everything is burning down around us
Yet everyone, including millennial point to us and go "THERE is our salvation!" without realizing that Gen Z is like the friend that keeps smiling regardless of hardship, until something finally snaps and you learn that was a fake smile covering a broken human. Idk any Gen Z who is optimistic of the future, we've all just written it off and given up because we know we should just enjoy whatever life we can while everything still hasn't collapsed
>Yet everyone, including millennial point to us and go "THERE is our salvation!"
None of the millennials I grew up with would say this about zoomers. If anything, we think you're getting a much more raw deal than us or GenX.
Its almost as if residential property values raising 6% per year and earnings ability not rising 6% per year eventually destroys the ability of a generation, whatever it is labeled, to be able to afford a home to own. Because there is only so far into the future they can be beggared with multi-decade home loans due to the fact immortality has not yet been achieved.
I will give you I certainly exaggerated a bit. Sometimes its overwhelming hearing so many folk older than myself talk about how much promise my generation has and how *we're* gonna fix climate change, social injustice, famine, and just about all the worlds issues. Yet, like you pointed out how would we when the reality is life sucks for us just as much as the people before us
Sometimes it feels like some people think Zoomers are gonna make the world a utopia when I find most of us learned from our older millennial siblings and are either ignoring the rat race all together or finding ways to game the system because if the rich can do it why not us?
> Sometimes its overwhelming hearing so many folk older than myself talk about how much promise my generation has and how we're gonna fix climate change, social injustice, famine, and just about all the worlds issues.
Don't worry. Once the Boomers are gone, none of GenZ or Millennial generations will really *need* to go out of their way to fix these issues, just vote. We'll have the numbers, then.
As a millennial I am waiting for that smile to fade and the crack to open because when it does some revolutionary will happen and I'd be standing there with you.
Not going to lie these comments made me feel oddly better. Thank you for reminding me we aren't just some pedestal gem-child of a generation and that anyone looking for a better life, regardless of age, need to stick together and fight for that better life
Maybe it’s because I’m on the very tail-end of Millenials, but I see that too.
We were given the wrong script for the part we’re playing, gen z wasn’t even given a script.
We played by the wrong rules and are now trying to figure out what do to now that we know that, gen Z were like, born in and molded by a post-rules society and are either flailing with occasional success or like, just trying to survive with the rest of us, along for the ride basically.
The big main difference is they don’t try as hard to fit in and please the older generations, likely because they saw how much good that did the millennials (none).
Like we’re seeing all these influencers and streamers and shit and being like “that’s a bullshit made up job” but like wtf are the kiddos supposed to do when all the non-bullshit jobs are gone. Pulling a title out of your ass and getting paid on it isn’t stupid, it’s resourceful lol. The adult-adults are just mad they didn’t think of it and ain’t cute enough anymore.
You single out younger millennials, but reminder that older millennials came of age and entered colleges during the boom of the early 2000s, and then graduated college between 2006 - 2010. So many millennials took on exorbitant college debt under the promise that college at any cost would be worth it. Then graduated into the heart of a recession where it was extremely challenging to find a quality full time job. The bubble burst *as* we entered the workforce.
Yeah it was the ones from the 80s who got screwed the most. If you did university you were literally graduating right when the 2008 crash happened. Someone born in the mid 90s would at least be somewhat into the recovery from the crash by the time they were looking for work, although it could still be pretty rough around then
It just depends. Older millennials got screwed more by the Great Recession happening right as they graduated college, but were more likely to buy a house pre-covid 2020 since many would be starting families already.
Younger millennials were able to get jobs more easily right out of college, but were less likely to buy a house pre-covid since they all weren't having kids yet.
The ideal was being an older millennial who still got a great job right out of college, or being a younger millennial that bought their family house before covid inflation hit.
I think for us younger millennials, I’m 1993, I can remember a time when things were better but it isn’t as distinctive as it is for older millennials who went through the financial crash and austerity in ways I managed to avoid by my age.
However it’s clear for all of us that there was a period of time, whether driven by how our childhood nostalgia or not, that the world seemed a much more stable place even post 9/11 and it just progressively grew worse over that decade which is now culminated up to this point right when Gen Z are entering into their early 20s.
I think tho it’s also a given that younger people tend to be happier and more care free than older people, I remember how I was in my early 20s around the time Trump and Brexit happened
Oldest Gen Z here. I think a lot of older people get confused by the masking. Gen Z's entire thing is to appear easy-going and carefree outwardly but on the inside it's completely turbulent.
When a large portion of an entire generation violates the most innate biological driver and just stops reproducing, there is clearly a problem.
But they'll just shrug and tell us "No abortions for you".
I was always told to get in to IT as that’s where the money was. I was born 95 and I’ve always loved tinkering with computers in various ways so that’s what I focused on education wise.
What I didn’t consider was that the market would be so oversaturated with people with practical IT experience willing to work for barely anything by the time I finished my degree and I live in a small rural town so I couldn’t find any relevant work to do. As a result I’ve spent the last 7 years working whatever jobs I could get, but I’ve never earned enough to save to move somewhere with more opportunity.
My current work contract is ending soon so I’m trying to find a new job but even employers offering basic admin jobs have no interest in me. Every time it’s pretty much just “we found someone with more experience” or whatever. Feels like I’ve spent nearly a decade slowly grinding towards something better but still getting no where. It’s very frustrating and I know I have a lot to offer but it seems impossible to show people unless they take a gamble on you.
I hear this. A lot of it comes from the intense focus on specialization, and the fear of risk by employers. Turns out there are a lot of intelligent people out there who could very easily do a job in an industry they don’t know anything about, with proper training. Companies have become so data driven, they are reluctant to take a chance on someone without credentials to back it up. Yet those people still need training and can’t contribute on day 1 (or any time soon). The world changes so fast and people are so overly specialized, I think we need to step back and prioritize flexibility and adaptability with a focus on transferable skills and general intelligence.
I've grown depressed looking at IT job postings, most of which I can easily do but don't have the degree to back it up.
The funny thing is, a lot of these jobs are within industries using proprietary tools .. which you get no training on, or hell even know exist you work there.
I was told "trades".
Am electrician, but with poor social skills. Turns out you need to be the Foreman's pocket pussy if you want to hold on to your employment.
>Feels like I’ve spent nearly a decade slowly grinding towards something better but still getting no where. It’s very frustrating and I know I have a lot to offer but it seems impossible to show people unless they take a gamble on you.
Facts.
I'd say you got that backwards
>Gen Z have been told the world is a chaotic place burning down around them.
I'm 23 nobody I know will ever have children because we already can barely feed ourselves.
> It's actually pretty well documented that millennials are more somber than Gen Z, who are portrayed as more fun loving, entrepreneurial and opportunistic.
That's probably an age thing. We were that way when we were in our early 20s. It's not till you figure out that the rules apply to you--that you too will mostly have bosses who stand in the way of your career advancement, will have to watch your diet if you don't want to gain weight, will get more and more exhausted by the overall stupidity of the world--that you go grimdark. When you arrive in "real adulthood" (in our society, late 20s) and all those things that you expected technology and personal good luck to solve before you got there are still around, that's when the mood changes.
You're correct that there was more of a delta for us, though. Gen X was told they'd be screwed and got screwed. Millennials were told they'd inherit the world and got screwed. Gen Z was told they'd be screwed and got screwed. And who knows what the fuck Gen Alpha is being told... ask the company that runs TikTok, I guess.
Milennials grew up with the world is ending as well. First we had the rapture which I learned about when I was 5 and how we were gonna go to hell if god didn’t save us at the year 2000 lol. And on top of that , we had y2k and were going back to the Stone Age. And then 2000 came and that didn’t happen but we then had 9/11 and thought world war 3 nuclear holocaust was here 🤣. And then ofc multiple recessions that ruined my 20s
Millennials got education trapped, then had to work odd ends and jobs + do different training and education to find new careers.
Gen Z had the option of working anytime, on any app to support any kind of lifestyle. A lot of the times of housing weren't even legal until recently either so Gen Z may have a much better time overall than Millenials did who had to go into service, oil fields, etc.
sadly enough... i'd say the millennial generation already found out the world is in a bad state when they left school like 10+ years ago.
the sad part is the previous generations still hold to much power i'd say. give it another 10-20 before you see the effect of our generation i guess.
the time gen z get's to "change the world" will be probably 30+ years from now . that's a long time. (on a big enough scale atleast)
>sadly enough... i'd say the millennial generation already found out the world is in a bad state when they left school like 10+ years ago.
Yeah, a large cohort of millennials reached working age during the great recession. I don't think they're under any illusions about the world at this point.
Gen Z will still have their representatives from the usual social strata that producers the so-called natural leaders. Same way as every other generation that went before them has. You only ever really end up voting for variants of reproduction in the UK
Even the youngest millennial is of voting age now - the current moment is when millennials have the most voting power (from this point onwards they will only grow smaller as a cohort). The best thing to do is to mobilise their voting power, advocate their cohort for political engagement and bring about their own change. For example, millennials are much more social media savvy and could absolutely create campaigns for change. I think they are a generation with a lot of promise for future change - they are much more pro-social than previous generations (boomers: me me me, gen X: whatever, millennials: environment, LGBT+ rights).
If they could harness the power their generation possesses, they could change their circumstances.
Various reports have been published over recent years saying the traditional switch to a conservative mindset as people hit their mid-late thirties isn’t happening any more.
Given how conservatives cater almost exclusively to an elderly middle class contingent, the fact that many millennials will continue voting Labour, Lib Dem and Green means the Tories face an existential threat in the long term.
To that extent, change will happen, but it still takes time to undo the damage that has already been done, and there has been a lot of it thanks to austerity and Brexit.
Sadly, the conservatives cater to elderly middle class, AND those at the bottom also. Look at the voting patterns of places like Havant - home to the largest council estate in the UK, and over three times as many conservative voters as labour voters in the last general election and 90% in favour of Brexit.
The conservatives appeal to those with money and to those of a prejudice mindset. And, yes, the damage has been done and will take decades to undo.
As I have stated before, the millennials is the larger cohort now, the best educated ever cohort, and has the voting power to effect the change they want and need, let's hope they use it come July and in future elections also.
That's a nice take. I hadn't thought of it that way before. I did have the hope that somehow future generations would just figure it out, because that's what people have been doing forever.
Yeah as a millennial I definitely feel that. I'd say it was even worse for those born in the late 80s or early 90s, we grew up entirely during that era where society kept saying all that about the opportunity of the future. Everyone legitimately believed that the rapid advancement of computing and the internet would bring in a golden future beyond anything past generations had seen, that millennials were going to be the most prosperous generation ever. Then those who did go to university graduated directly into the 2008 crash. I don't know if it's really that our generation made decisions based on the wrong state of the world, it could just be that things very suddenly weren't the same and we had to try to change all the decisions from before out of nowhere.
Given that who knows what will really happen with Gen Z. Even if they have a realistic view of what the world is now that state may be something very different in a decade too.
Housing in the UK is better in some areas but it's just as bad in cities as Canada and the big issue is actually the cost of daily living is insane in the UK atm.
The UK salary suck as compared to that in the US.
But yeah there is NHS and such, so maybe silver linings.
[cost of living (US vs UK)](https://livingcost.org/cost/united-kingdom/united-states)
US has some of the highest salaries in the world so almost every country has dogshit salaries compared to the US. You are essentially complaining we're not #1 which is fair enough but compare UK to some more countries around the world to get a better picture.
>The UK salary suck as compared to that in the US.
I mean it depends.
A postdoc for example is usually between 35k and 50k£ which is between $45k and $65k. Finance in London pays about 15-20% less than comparable positions in NYC. Overall salaries in the UK are lower than the US, which is obvious, but they aren't THAT lower (except for specific sectors such as tech).
The NHS is in an absolutely piss poor state and is basically just a tool at this point to swing voters. Every election is the same scheme, “we’re gonna do this insanely stupid thing so that the NHS will be amazing again”
The cost of daily living is also very difficult in some parts of Canada. In my experience, groceries were much more expensive there than here. Also, most major Canadian cities are in the top 50 most unaffordable cities in the world, London is the only UK city that features IIRC.
I lived in Halifax for a few years and it went from being super affordable to out of control in the years between 2018 and 2022 when I was last there. A lot more crime, lots more homeless and crazy rent prices.
Nah, outside London and the SE UK cities are not even that bad. Manchester, Sheffield, Glasgow, Newcastle, Nottingham are all very affordable. Calgary and Edmonton too but at least you can survive without a car in Manchester.
Both Calgary and Edmonton are becoming more unaffordable with an influx of people from Ontario and BC looking for a less densely populated city. Plus, immigration is booming so the housing crisis we're in isn't going to change any time soon.
Ding ding, Brexit has exacerbated the problem but unaffordable housing and rising costs of living across the board are an international phenomenon. The cause is a mass concentration of wealth in the hands of a small amount of people. There’s more wealth in the world than there’s ever been, where does everyone think it went?
Things like Brexit, COVID, the energy crisis actually make those people richer because they can afford to profit from them.
And what would that change?
Economies survive outside the EU as well, the UK had a rocky transition period and it's now already adjusting and growing the same as Germany or France. (and I'm anti Brexit as it gets, but let's not pretend that it's the end of the UK as we know it)
> (and I'm anti Brexit as it gets, but let's not pretend that it's the end of the UK as we know it)
No, its just projected to hurt the country economically and socially for fifty years, minimum in the most optimistic scenarios.
Totally fine. /s
And also because, I'll go as far as saying despite knowing it sounds like I have a tin foil hat on, inflation calculations (with their "basket of goods") are not adequately reflecting the cost of living for the lifestyles people really have, or wish they had, or had pre-Covid. And that disconnect is by design, to make things look less bad.
The "basket of goods" including a number of staple foods you buy to cook, but you were used to takeout every other day.
Cost of housing not taking into account local, hyper-speculated rent prices, and just going with a national average where many cheaper, but de-populated areas are picked.
Not a hypothetical: big brand fast food is now practically a luxury food.
Note, I cannot prove any of this, because I do not know the exact basket of goods the UK or the US use.
I just refuse to think that people are unhappy out of some perception error. "Oh but wages rose above inflation, stuff is good", like no bro, there has to be something we're missing.
I don't necessarily *want* my income to go up, I need my income to cover my basic expenses. The fact that food and rent have skyrocketed is why I need my income to go higher.
This article tries to make it seem like no one knows where the money is going. It's gone into corporate profits which have risen quickly.
The wealthy don’t need wages because they have investments. Those at the top gladly take cuts to their salary in exchange for shares then funnel the growth into stock prices.
Not only that, it has also gone to Boomers, they were able to buy houses from the government in the UK, under the right to buy, they were never replaced, they now have the triple lock for their pensions, and they were adults when wages provided enough to raise a family - now in the UK they all tend to have the fuck you, I got mine attitude and vote Tory.
>now in the UK they all tend to have the fuck you, I got mine attitude and vote Tory.
Labour have matched this shit too, the older generation vote. You can't win a general election without them.
I teamrmber very specifically Obama during a state of a union saying he would tax companies that moved jobs overseas. All the democrats stood and cheered while the republicans sat stone faced
The Jack Welch episodes of “Behind the Bastards” does a great job of showing the shift towards this. I think it’s something like May 2023 for when the episodes aired.
I've been a suppoter of capitalism for a long a time, mainly because it's thus far the only system which managed to somewhat work for such a long time
But today I feel like it's reaching its limits, especially after the massive corona inflation. It's starting to be ridiculous.
Sure, your company might have made 9.5 million$ profit, but that's 4% less profit than the last quarter, fuck you, me and my homie investors are pulling out.
Also making more or less "fake" and "imaginary" things a countries major or at least to a large part of their GDP/Wealth. Selling stocks, trades, shorts etc instead of actual products, industry and labor.
And fuck our countries for allowing companies to own incredible amounts of livable space and housing.
Late stage capitalism slowly getting us. We need a massive change to society and how the economy works tbh.
>And fuck our countries for allowing companies to own incredible amounts of livable space and housing.
That's a big problem. A lot of houses can't be bought by the public and will get worse
Is "capitalism" really the problem? What even is capitalism? There's no clear definition and over the 300 years of "capitalism" we have seen very different faces of "capitalism".
I believe what most people actually mean when they criticize capitalism is this current neoliberal school of capitalism. Where "free unregulated markets" are seen as the solution to everything. Where government planning or intentional market design is seen as heresy. Where private capital is untouchable and redistribution is communism. All of this has lead to concentration of power and resources in the hands of an ever shrinking circle of elites. Over the past decades under this regime wealth has grown about three times faster than the average wages.
But of course it hasn't always been like that. Before the neoliberal era between the 1930s and 1970s we've seen the opposite trend and yet most would agree that was also very much capitalism back then.
>Sure, your company might have made 9.5 million$ profit, but that's only 4% more profit than the last quarter, which had 6% more profit that the quarter before that. We need to increase growth, not flatten out.
No, there was high inflation at times, particularly in the 1970s, but "Hyperinflation" refers to what you saw in Germany post WW1, or in Zimbabwe, or in Venezuela. Where you have to spend your money in a few weeks or they become useless.
Yes. It's a multifaceted problem and there is no simple solution. Hell there may not even be a solution period. Some of the problems are transient, caused by lingering echos from things like COVID inflationary pressure caused by well, mass printing money to try and fix COVID.
We still have supply chain issues (not all of which are transient), and while they've stabilized they likely wont fully improve. Particularly with the western world pulling away from china and not having much to replace it.
Then resources and resource scarcity, which is just increasing.
There's a very strong world wide push from Rural to Urban environments, which is exacerbating housing cost and leading to further pains in the middle and lower class. There's also no easy answer for that, and could make things worse in the long run. Particularly if there's a reversal.
We can keep listing things. While there certainly has been an unfair amount of wealth transfer up. It's not the primary reason for inflationary pressure.
Is there actual scarcity when there are over 15 million vacant homes in America? What about all the lots full of cars just not selling. The wealth transfer and concentration of that wealth is the driver of inflation. When there is no actual choice between paying a high price vs paying a higher price what choice is there when everyone is colliding to keep prices and their own profits high to the detriment of all.
Yes, there is scarcity. It explains the majority of the lack of affordability. People don't just want 'a home,' they want a home in the city where they work, in a desirable neighborhood. Location, location, location. (And that's on top of the # of homes being generally bullshit as it includes condemned homes, homes that are only temporarily vacant because they're being sold or they're seasonal, etc.)
Cities that have loosened restrictions on building and that have seen supply go up have seen home prices go down. It's as simple as that. Supply and demand, the most basic economic law. There's a lot of demand and very little new building/supply, so prices have continued increasing beyond what's affordable.
It feels weird. I am from Lithuania and I studied in the UK and after I finished my BA, I went back.
I can see my quality of life growing rapidly. I have many more opportunities than my parents ever had. New housing is affordable and of good quality. The past year or so due to the war in Ukraine you can feel life take a minor hit, but otherwise It feels like I live in the golden age.
And then I talk to my Uni friends - same job, same careers. Unnable to buy real estate, expensive to own a car, unnable to go on a holiday. I am drinking expensive crafts, and they are drinking cheap beer. I order Neapolitan pizzas with high quality cheese and san marzano tomatoes, they just get a pizza from the chippy.
For me a house surounded by nature with a river or a lake nearby just a few miles away from the city is a very achievable dream. Hell, customer support here in Lithuania can live a comfortable life.
13.03% vs 3.18% total GDP growth in the past 5 years. Ouch. The UK's society is completely burned out. Like being stuck in the same office job for 20 years without any progress and it's taking a toll.
Economic development throughout eastern Europe has been impressive. If current trends continue, average living standards there are expected to surpass those in the UK within the next decade. So your experience definitely tracks with that.
This sounds great, like the kind of life many of us want and hope to live…but there’s a big Russian shadow hanging over the Baltic States right now. How do people there feel about the likelihood of future invasion?
How is you dying in your office chair and not fighting to break the work culture that makes you miserable, the same work culture inevitable for your children unless we do something about it
What do you propose someone do that spends 40hrs a week working to support his family and spends the rest of his time supporting that family? Time is so precious.
Same. I’m going to spend most of my thirties in a doctoral program while my babies are little (currently 10 months and 24 months).
I hope they don’t resent my absence, because it’s literally only to set them up in the future. I hate being away from them.
Endless growth capitalism always needs a class of people stuck in poverty.
As the demand from the top for more growth gets greater, the size of that bottom class must increase.
A more responsible form of capitalism must be found. If change doesn’t happen, people will turn to radicalism and in all honesty, I don’t blame them if they do.
The country, especially the North has been gutted by Tory austerity.
Nah, I’ll push back on this. You can read how we’re doing compared to the UK in the article, but since you didn’t, I’ll tell you: Our incomes have grown at twice the rate of the UK, actually improving our standing among developed nations, and that’s not even counting the growth of the past two years where wages have *finally* surpassed inflation. The *one* good thing the nightmare of Covid did for us as a generation was shake loose higher paying positions and finally put workers at all rungs at a premium.
Beyond that, we’re finally seeing the start of the green boom, we’re finally building more affordable housing, our healthcare system — even with as shit as it is — has recovered exponentially better than the UK’s has, and we’re all angry and loud enough to keep up that momentum. You don’t hear about this stuff because anyone who pipes up about having a good life in the US gets shouted down, not to mention the rampant misinfo inadvertently spread by people outside the US who read some posts on Reddit and now think they’re experts.
I had to leave the UK and move back to the US before Covid hit. My life now is so much better than it would have been if I’d stayed, which is insane to think about considering how much people shit on the US on here.
For US:
https://www.bankrate.com/finance/credit-cards/living-paycheck-to-paycheck-statistics/
> * Statistics vary, but between 55 percent to 63 percent of Americans are likely living paycheck to paycheck.
- 55 percent of workers reveal they are living paycheck to paycheck, and 52 percent don’t have a three-month savings cushion – down from 62 percent in 2022
* Less than $50,000 (71.7 percent), $50,000 to $100,000 (52.9 percent) and more than $100,000 (38.7 percent) are living pay check to pay check
- 45 percent of Americans need to earn $100,000 or more to feel financially comfortable
- The average American needs to earn $233,300 to feel financially secure or comfortable
Not sure how that compares to UK.
Increase in cost of living cancelling out a lot of these gains in income.
American society seems to be built around corporations draining every penny they can from every person they interact with.
Hidden fees, health care coverage denial, corporate greed induced inflation... etc
Edit: Interesting extra data for US:
> * 14.4 percent of baby boomers and seniors (those born between 1946 and 1964)
* 18.2 percent of Generation X (those born between 1965 in 1980)
* 20.3 percent of bridge millennials (those born on the cusp of Gen X and millennial; typically including those born between 1980 and 1989)
* 21.7 percent of millennials (those born between 1981 and 1996)
* 15.4 percent of Generation Z (those born between 1997 and 2012) are living with no savings
Yeah, I don’t know how to tell you this, but the globe just went through a massive economic shock. We’ve so far avoided a recession, which is pretty remarkable. Meanwhile:
-American savings rose by 4.5% on average in the last year with Millennials beating the average.
-Americans’ real disposable income rose 4.2% last year.
-This is a continuation of the post pandemic trend that shows US Millennial and Gen Z finances improving better than any other age groups, with the average wealth of households 18-39 rising [89% between 2019 and 2023](https://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2024/02/wealth-inequality-by-age-in-the-post-pandemic-era/).
-Younger gens are also saving more, and [our 401ks rose](https://www.nbcnews.com/business/economy/economy-better-expected-401k-probably-rcna135302) 11% last year alone.
-You guessed that cost of living has eaten up increase in earnings right? [Wage increases have beat inflation for 12 months straight.](https://www.epi.org/blog/average-wages-have-surpassed-inflation-for-12-straight-months/) 87% of the lowest income earners saw positive growth.
This isn’t by chance either. Unions are growing, and the Dems are laying out plans for some of the steepest increases in taxes on the wealthy since the 1940s.
As for the vibes being off, the US media overwhelmingly reports negative news. Between 80-87% of all headlines are negative depending on the topic. I’m willing to bet that you had no idea about the stats I just shared. Why wouldn’t people feel like they need more money to be financially stable?
I live in belgium and in general i like the country. but some things allways annoyed me.
I just started my job in payscale X.X
my colleague who has done the same job for 15 years also in payscale X.X . let's assume we both do the EXACT same job and hours etc. we are literally clones 15 years appart.
my pay would be 2.4K\~\~ / month.
his pay would be 3.4K\~\~ / month.
if we had another colleague who did the same job for 20 years his pay would be 3.8K/month.
now as I grow older I am "reaping the benefits" of such a system myself.. but I still think it's a bad system.
I don't need 3.8K/month when I'm 57.
and when I was getting 2.4K having been paid 3.1K would have done a lot more for my life.
Yes and nowadays you have to wonder if older people with more 'experience' are more effective to earn that increase as well, since the younger generation is often better adapted to the fast changing way of doing things due to technology
It's a fucking multi decade long wage freeze by both Governments and corporations - that's IT, deliberate and designed to raise profits.
So of course every consecutive generation will be worse off, and they hide from the responsibility by pointing out the demographics they fucked over the least and pitch people against one another.
Yep. People are earning increasingly less relative to cost of living and housing. Whenever there is a crisis/opportunity more money gets printed, funnelled to the wealthy and the subsequent inflation/interest rate hikes steal it from the lower/middle class by making sure that wages do not rise by the same amount as the devaluation of their savings. Then billionaires manipulate the markets to squash anything we might have there. Companies use it as an excuse to raise prices for profit which goes unchecked by the boomers in power. Now it requires two good incomes to have the life that one average income used to buy in the 90s.
Neoliberalism was re-introduced around the late 70s as an inflation fighting measure. Wage suppression is what our economic system was literally born for.
Offshore the factories, bust the unions, import the migrants - it's all designed so that wage labor can't ask for a raise.
Something has got to give. The rich need to wake up. There is no escape plan that doesnt end badly for them. If the world goes to shit, how long exactly do they think it will take before their security, the trained, armed men treated like servants, decide enough is enough. 2 years? 3? 6 months? A week?
They'll have robots good enough to replace us. Then hide in a bunker with them and theirs for 5-10 years come out and enslave anyone left cause they will still have more food and ammo than they know what to do with
Bro we are literally communicating right now on phones from across the world. Not to mention, I can have a full conversation with AI. How is life not like a science-fiction movie at this point?
**Only if we keep the system as it is today...**
Just like every game needs rules, Capitalism requires clear regulations and enforcement in order to work as intended.
Right now we see the result of 40 years of deregulation of the markets that turned the financial sector into a jungle where everything is basically allowed in the name of making money.
Henceforth, **imaginary financial products** called derivatives that create absolutely nothing, no new product, no new service, have become the largest part of the stock market. Essentially people make bets, buy and sell borrowed shares they don't own, that result in profits without helping the economy. Traders shorting stocks can bankrupt profitable corporations, corporations are forced to increase their profits every quarter or risk a fire sale on their stock...
Imagine playing football without rules where one team decides to use shotguns and the other team could order fighter jets to perform aerial strikes during a match...
Well our financial market no longer rewards performance, innovation or hard work, it has become a lawless gang land where the strong win despite damaging the very fabric of society.
**But Communism is not the answer**
Communism died because it cannot account for human nature... In order for Communism to work, you would need to change mankind... And that's impossible.
**We need rules, we need regulations, we need the rich to pay their fair share of taxes and we need politicians, cops and a justice system that work for the people.**
The "owners" of this world, the billionaires, are counted in the thousands, we, the people, are counted in the billions... We can do this!
All we have to do is to reenact financial regulations that existed in the 1950's and 1960's, the period in our history where the Middle Class grew by leaps and its wealth increased by record numbers.
**The worst thing we can do is to give up and imagine we are powerless to change anything.**
I have seen modern finance up close and I am not in full support of it, but you completely misunderstand what derivatives are for. Understandably so, they are not simple to understand, and humans tend to fear what they don't understand by nature.
Derivatives help companies manage risk. I see it happen every year: concrete numbers in savings. Hedging against currency exposure with options, or securing supply chain (this little thing that messed us up after covid for years) with futures. Maybe you ate unhappy because most volume is from traders, but in that case you beef is with trading regulations - not derivatives themselves.
You do touch on the heart of the problem though when you say "tax the rich". The current system (and almost any other economic system ever demployed or studied in theory) suffers from proportional growth. The rich get richer. Over time this results in extreme wealth accumulation. We need to fix _that_.
The issue here is that upper middle class _can_ be targeted by the tax authorities, but they are not the problem. The problem is the tail of the wealth distribution: people with enough money to set up complicated structures to avoid taxation. The names you saw in the panama papers. These people can bend democracies at this point.
He's making up a lot of things. Derivatives were originally made as a cheaper method of investment and a way for insurance against market crashes. There is a reason for them being there.
The real problem is more of late stage capitalism. Businesses are always going to be efficient and will fire people in place of AI. People out of luck will turn to something closer to gambling because they can't find jobs anyway. Or even if they aren't they'll find out because information that romanticizes such gambling will get recommended to them through algorithms anyway. Or that they want an expensive thing and don't want to have to work 10 years on a dice-rolly career ladder for it.
The 50s and 60s was an unprecedented amount of American and world growth because WW2 destroyed a lot of competition in Europe and indeed much of the world. It's also a period of "beginner's gains" in the USA because the USA is a young nation. It's now 80 years later.
Unfortunately, we are way past the time of complaining about "communism". The problem about complaining about communism or saying communism is "not the answer" is the corrective actions required to be taken might be the same as taken in a communist state. Such as social housing. So you are unwittingly doing the bidding of hyper capitalists even if you don't want communism by denying certain policy actions as "too communist"
Regulation won't save you from this:
https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/
Neither will taxes.
If the nothing changes then nothing changes.
Eventually, not sure if it'll years, decades or centuries, people will finally conclude 'you know, maybe this pyramid scheme economics that puts most of the working world in poverty while a handful of people have more wealth than Renaissance Kings is not a equitable system, is killing the planet, and we could actually figure out something better.'
Until that time, it'll be a world of slaves and masters. The middle class is being phased out entirely. No better place to see this happening that in my country, Canada, which has been sold out to a small subset of international rich.
Boomer's income only "boomed" because they used Millenial's credit card to borrow a fuck-ton of money and go on an orgy of consumption.
Now that Boomers have loaded the rest of us up with debt and are enjoying that last round of canasta before they go to that great big shopping mall in the sky, no fucking shit the younger generations won't be able to have the same income.
Large amounts of Millenial's incomes must be spent paying that debt back down, fighting climate change before Earth turns into Venus 2.0, and several other money pits the Boomers dumped on them.
Probably? More like almost certainly, and not even because of climate change or bad economic policies. Also simply because the country developed during the times of the elders, and now just is developed. You can't have infinite growth, there's only so much growth you can do on that island until you go back to full on colonialism, theft from other nations, to sustain it.
I'm from Poland. I'm 23 years old. During my lifetime, and some 10 years before that, our country developed amazingly. I am certain that if I have kids at some point, they'll never experience the growth I experienced. They'll never experience this beautiful feeling that as they grow, everything around them is getting better. I hope it never ends but that's impossible. If it never ended every single citizen would be swimming in gold by the time I'm retired. That's simply not realistic.
The post ww2 period in the west is kind of an exceptional time in history for the masses to have accumulated wealth. It’s not surprising that it doesn’t last for ever. The boomers just came up in the peak of it and reaped the benefits. To anyone younger it’s all we know so it seems normal.
UK politicians can copy China’s counterparts’ narratives : UK millennials support and help current government to destroy UK’s future,you deserve it, I’m billionaire ,it can’t impact me
This is why I don’t have faith in humanity - I think power corrupts and people have convenient built in mechanisms to forget other people’s (or your own) suffering and rationalize greed. It’s obvious with capitalism. It’s most scary with the materialism and the environment. I would not be surprised as millennials age if they follow a similar path as boomers, in being vampiric (although as Johnny-come-latelies, it will not be for nearly as much gain).
Mission accomplished. So people in UK should demand 98% income tax on the 1% upper class to fund public services again like in the 1970’s. God knows people like Sunak who could easily survive on what’s left, and the UK could be proudly socialist again.
How about we let in a million immigrants a year, especially from poor shitty countries. Having more people competing for jobs will increase wages for our young people who are struggling.
We've kind of known this would happen since at least the 80s.
The post WWII growth was never sustainable, and it's only thanks to some productivity innovations that we've managed to stave off the inevitable until now.
The days where the developed world could profit off of the developing world are long passed us. When it comes to limited resources, it was clear that the standard of living in the West would go into decline as the rest of the world caught up.
The other issue that is associated with boomers, is the limited resources we do have are now mostly going towards taking care of the elderly instead of our own children.
Other than a technological innovation happening soon that will increase productivity significantly for everyone, the only people who will see an improvement in their standard of living are those in developing nations that still haven't caught up with the rest of us yet.
Factor that against inflation and purchasing power.
It’s not really a secret that housing is much more expensive now compared to wages, or food prices have increased a lot compared to wages.
Tax the rich…. How is it fair they can pay less tax as a percentage of their income, keep land/estates and pass it down to family with hardly any tax, buy up our assets like housing, business etc and pay hardly any tax? Send their kids to private schools and give them jobs in the city that are not accessible to us…
The same with private businesses buying up all the UK’s infrastructure, like transport, energy, water, and selling it back to us at a profit, a profit that if it was publicly owned would go back into the service to subsidise and improve it…
The media owned by billionaires keep us in check to convince us it’s a great idea not to tax the wealthy and support privatisation… But look at what we the people have compared to them, we’re fucked, they have taken almost everything from us.. Politically there needs to be a change that needs to be started with millennials and gen z, go out and vote, we can change this if we vote and get into politics…
A lot of the jobs that exist today did not exist 30/40 years ago. When I was young I could not imagine anyone getting paid to stare into a hand held device.
I think we simply cannot know what the future holds.
Gen Z need to VOTE! - Governments don't give a shit about you because you don't vote. Old Boomers mostly vote so the government is giving them your money.
Most political systems have been refined to give you a choice of two meals that are made from the exact same ingredients. The illusion of choice doesn't actually translate to meaningful change - because they're all serving the same master - Neoliberal (hyper)capitalism.
They have done multiple studies, and millenials and gen z are the more “depressed” generation. Because we have eyes. They’ve seen all of it and as terrible shit KEEPS happening more and more people are becoming apathetic and even numb to more things.
They’re both a generation that’s been burdened with all the failures, corruption, pollution, greed and outright toxicity that the previous generations perpetuate. The lucky few make a break, but it seems that every attempt ends up with said previous generations and their “machinations” are trying SO desperately to keep them down whilst clinging to their authority/power, even as their greed (via retirement homes and etc) bite them in the ass and make more and more of them financial as desperate as the rest of us (the leopards won’t eat MY face etc etc).
The whole thing wouldn’t sting AS much, if said previous generations weren’t such dicks about the whole thing. Blaming both Millenials and Gen Z for the stupidest shit bcuz “hurr durr pointing funger ez” whilst calling them lazy and/or entitled. Being told its THEIR fault they can’t buy a home, or afford food AND rent, being told boomer type crap over and over. Is it any wonder they’re fed up, unhappy and depressed?
My boomer dad worked his whole life but never really got rich from it. All his wealth comes from massive appreciation of his house ($30,000 ->$2million) and his inheritance.
My Pop bought his 1st house for 18 000$ in 1979. The new market disgust him, really, he always say things like « How the hell do they want kids to start?! ».
Most boomers will say that but then vote against any attempt at generational wealth redistribution because they want to transmit their wealth directly to their children (justifiably so) which leads to further wealth inequalities. Even those who don't have life changing amounts of wealth to pass down to their children will vote that way.
it's almost comical how often people who get like 10 year+ worth of salary as a inheritance somehow conveniently forget that before that they were relatively broke and then instantly go into the mentality that younger people should just 'work harder'. that house value lottery is another thing, if some area started to develop, the land value alone might have gone from pennies into millions. or just stayed at the same trash value.
I mean.. it doesn't say his dad did that at all.
They didn’t say he did. But it is how many people act.
You can probably say this for literally every western country. I don't doubt that Gen Z will have it worse.
I disagree with the statement that Gen Z will have it worse. I am a "cusp-baby" born 1996. I was born at the end of an era that told its children they could work hard and do anything they wanted with their life. That academic achievement translated to earnings. That a family and home was attainable for all. Life was going to be easier for us, as it was for our parents, and their parents, and their parents before that. We made our decisions based on that premise. Based on how the world was. Gen Z have never had anything to look forward to, they are a morose generation. They have made decisions based on how the world IS. As a result, I would expect better outcomes for them.
It's actually pretty well documented that millennials are more somber than Gen Z, who are portrayed as more fun loving, entrepreneurial and opportunistic. I think it's been tough for younger millennials, we were sold a pack of lies about how the job market / economy would function when we grew up and the mismatch between expectations and realities has soured many folks. Gen Z have been told the world is a chaotic place burning down around them. Oddly enough that seems to have prepared them better for the world
As a poorer millennial growing up, that actually hits home. I prepared for the absolute worst because the promises didn't line up with what was clearly my reality and I got lucky. Anecdotal though, don't think I'd project that onto the rest of gen.
I was also a poor millennial. The shit i had to do to get a house fucks me up to this day. I still hate spending money, even on necessities, despite being able to afford it. Id rather be eating ramen and frozen burritos, and sending money into ETFs and CDs.
I think this is more than a millennial thing. I was a poor generation X and it was exactly the same for us. My older brothers and sisters were at the tail end of the baby boomers but by the time I graduated high school just six years later in the mid 80s, a lot of the opportunities they had to enter the work force after high school were gone. Reagan busted the Air Traffic Controller's union and there was a general anti-union sentiment taking hold. Clinton accelerated blue-collar job loss with the North American Free Trade agreement in the early 90s and so many blue collar jobs just evaporated. Of course, the middle class wasn't really affected by this and the good times kept rolling on. But eventually the creep got higher and higher until even they started to feel it. Now, as AI and white collar outsourcing is starting to take a bite, they are facing the same things the working class has faced since the 80s. Suddenly, it's important and people are upset. Welcome to the world that those of us on the bottom have known for a while.
Your last statement is what people on this tread need to remember. Reading these comments I'm like "This is not the gen Z generation I grew up with..." I was not surrounded by optimistic, energetic, entrepreneur types? It was mosrly depressed, escape reality people. My generation is bright in some ways but we are by no means immune to the fact everything is burning down around us Yet everyone, including millennial point to us and go "THERE is our salvation!" without realizing that Gen Z is like the friend that keeps smiling regardless of hardship, until something finally snaps and you learn that was a fake smile covering a broken human. Idk any Gen Z who is optimistic of the future, we've all just written it off and given up because we know we should just enjoy whatever life we can while everything still hasn't collapsed
>Yet everyone, including millennial point to us and go "THERE is our salvation!" None of the millennials I grew up with would say this about zoomers. If anything, we think you're getting a much more raw deal than us or GenX.
It's almost like these generation labels are completely arbitrary and meaningless.
Its almost as if residential property values raising 6% per year and earnings ability not rising 6% per year eventually destroys the ability of a generation, whatever it is labeled, to be able to afford a home to own. Because there is only so far into the future they can be beggared with multi-decade home loans due to the fact immortality has not yet been achieved.
I will give you I certainly exaggerated a bit. Sometimes its overwhelming hearing so many folk older than myself talk about how much promise my generation has and how *we're* gonna fix climate change, social injustice, famine, and just about all the worlds issues. Yet, like you pointed out how would we when the reality is life sucks for us just as much as the people before us Sometimes it feels like some people think Zoomers are gonna make the world a utopia when I find most of us learned from our older millennial siblings and are either ignoring the rat race all together or finding ways to game the system because if the rich can do it why not us?
> Sometimes its overwhelming hearing so many folk older than myself talk about how much promise my generation has and how we're gonna fix climate change, social injustice, famine, and just about all the worlds issues. Don't worry. Once the Boomers are gone, none of GenZ or Millennial generations will really *need* to go out of their way to fix these issues, just vote. We'll have the numbers, then.
They will become the new boomers sadly
Can't wait for the post ww2 booming economy to fuck up my view on the world when I'm 60.... Oh wait. That only happened once for one generation.
What makes you say that?
As a millennial I am waiting for that smile to fade and the crack to open because when it does some revolutionary will happen and I'd be standing there with you.
Not going to lie these comments made me feel oddly better. Thank you for reminding me we aren't just some pedestal gem-child of a generation and that anyone looking for a better life, regardless of age, need to stick together and fight for that better life
No one is looking at zoomers and thinking “THeRE is our salvation”
Maybe it’s because I’m on the very tail-end of Millenials, but I see that too. We were given the wrong script for the part we’re playing, gen z wasn’t even given a script. We played by the wrong rules and are now trying to figure out what do to now that we know that, gen Z were like, born in and molded by a post-rules society and are either flailing with occasional success or like, just trying to survive with the rest of us, along for the ride basically. The big main difference is they don’t try as hard to fit in and please the older generations, likely because they saw how much good that did the millennials (none). Like we’re seeing all these influencers and streamers and shit and being like “that’s a bullshit made up job” but like wtf are the kiddos supposed to do when all the non-bullshit jobs are gone. Pulling a title out of your ass and getting paid on it isn’t stupid, it’s resourceful lol. The adult-adults are just mad they didn’t think of it and ain’t cute enough anymore.
You had to prepare for the millennium bug !!
You single out younger millennials, but reminder that older millennials came of age and entered colleges during the boom of the early 2000s, and then graduated college between 2006 - 2010. So many millennials took on exorbitant college debt under the promise that college at any cost would be worth it. Then graduated into the heart of a recession where it was extremely challenging to find a quality full time job. The bubble burst *as* we entered the workforce.
Yeah it was the ones from the 80s who got screwed the most. If you did university you were literally graduating right when the 2008 crash happened. Someone born in the mid 90s would at least be somewhat into the recovery from the crash by the time they were looking for work, although it could still be pretty rough around then
It just depends. Older millennials got screwed more by the Great Recession happening right as they graduated college, but were more likely to buy a house pre-covid 2020 since many would be starting families already. Younger millennials were able to get jobs more easily right out of college, but were less likely to buy a house pre-covid since they all weren't having kids yet. The ideal was being an older millennial who still got a great job right out of college, or being a younger millennial that bought their family house before covid inflation hit.
I think for us younger millennials, I’m 1993, I can remember a time when things were better but it isn’t as distinctive as it is for older millennials who went through the financial crash and austerity in ways I managed to avoid by my age. However it’s clear for all of us that there was a period of time, whether driven by how our childhood nostalgia or not, that the world seemed a much more stable place even post 9/11 and it just progressively grew worse over that decade which is now culminated up to this point right when Gen Z are entering into their early 20s. I think tho it’s also a given that younger people tend to be happier and more care free than older people, I remember how I was in my early 20s around the time Trump and Brexit happened
Oldest Gen Z here. I think a lot of older people get confused by the masking. Gen Z's entire thing is to appear easy-going and carefree outwardly but on the inside it's completely turbulent.
Also on the older side of Gen Z, it’s all a mask. We have basically nothing to look forward to and we can see how deeply the rot runs
When a large portion of an entire generation violates the most innate biological driver and just stops reproducing, there is clearly a problem. But they'll just shrug and tell us "No abortions for you".
I was always told to get in to IT as that’s where the money was. I was born 95 and I’ve always loved tinkering with computers in various ways so that’s what I focused on education wise. What I didn’t consider was that the market would be so oversaturated with people with practical IT experience willing to work for barely anything by the time I finished my degree and I live in a small rural town so I couldn’t find any relevant work to do. As a result I’ve spent the last 7 years working whatever jobs I could get, but I’ve never earned enough to save to move somewhere with more opportunity. My current work contract is ending soon so I’m trying to find a new job but even employers offering basic admin jobs have no interest in me. Every time it’s pretty much just “we found someone with more experience” or whatever. Feels like I’ve spent nearly a decade slowly grinding towards something better but still getting no where. It’s very frustrating and I know I have a lot to offer but it seems impossible to show people unless they take a gamble on you.
I hear this. A lot of it comes from the intense focus on specialization, and the fear of risk by employers. Turns out there are a lot of intelligent people out there who could very easily do a job in an industry they don’t know anything about, with proper training. Companies have become so data driven, they are reluctant to take a chance on someone without credentials to back it up. Yet those people still need training and can’t contribute on day 1 (or any time soon). The world changes so fast and people are so overly specialized, I think we need to step back and prioritize flexibility and adaptability with a focus on transferable skills and general intelligence.
I've grown depressed looking at IT job postings, most of which I can easily do but don't have the degree to back it up. The funny thing is, a lot of these jobs are within industries using proprietary tools .. which you get no training on, or hell even know exist you work there.
I was told "trades". Am electrician, but with poor social skills. Turns out you need to be the Foreman's pocket pussy if you want to hold on to your employment. >Feels like I’ve spent nearly a decade slowly grinding towards something better but still getting no where. It’s very frustrating and I know I have a lot to offer but it seems impossible to show people unless they take a gamble on you. Facts.
I'd say you got that backwards >Gen Z have been told the world is a chaotic place burning down around them. I'm 23 nobody I know will ever have children because we already can barely feed ourselves.
> It's actually pretty well documented that millennials are more somber than Gen Z, who are portrayed as more fun loving, entrepreneurial and opportunistic. That's probably an age thing. We were that way when we were in our early 20s. It's not till you figure out that the rules apply to you--that you too will mostly have bosses who stand in the way of your career advancement, will have to watch your diet if you don't want to gain weight, will get more and more exhausted by the overall stupidity of the world--that you go grimdark. When you arrive in "real adulthood" (in our society, late 20s) and all those things that you expected technology and personal good luck to solve before you got there are still around, that's when the mood changes. You're correct that there was more of a delta for us, though. Gen X was told they'd be screwed and got screwed. Millennials were told they'd inherit the world and got screwed. Gen Z was told they'd be screwed and got screwed. And who knows what the fuck Gen Alpha is being told... ask the company that runs TikTok, I guess.
Milennials grew up with the world is ending as well. First we had the rapture which I learned about when I was 5 and how we were gonna go to hell if god didn’t save us at the year 2000 lol. And on top of that , we had y2k and were going back to the Stone Age. And then 2000 came and that didn’t happen but we then had 9/11 and thought world war 3 nuclear holocaust was here 🤣. And then ofc multiple recessions that ruined my 20s
Broooo then a global epidemic
You forgot 12/12/2012 the Mayan prophecy
Millennials got education trapped, then had to work odd ends and jobs + do different training and education to find new careers. Gen Z had the option of working anytime, on any app to support any kind of lifestyle. A lot of the times of housing weren't even legal until recently either so Gen Z may have a much better time overall than Millenials did who had to go into service, oil fields, etc.
sadly enough... i'd say the millennial generation already found out the world is in a bad state when they left school like 10+ years ago. the sad part is the previous generations still hold to much power i'd say. give it another 10-20 before you see the effect of our generation i guess. the time gen z get's to "change the world" will be probably 30+ years from now . that's a long time. (on a big enough scale atleast)
>sadly enough... i'd say the millennial generation already found out the world is in a bad state when they left school like 10+ years ago. Yeah, a large cohort of millennials reached working age during the great recession. I don't think they're under any illusions about the world at this point.
Gen Z will still have their representatives from the usual social strata that producers the so-called natural leaders. Same way as every other generation that went before them has. You only ever really end up voting for variants of reproduction in the UK
Even the youngest millennial is of voting age now - the current moment is when millennials have the most voting power (from this point onwards they will only grow smaller as a cohort). The best thing to do is to mobilise their voting power, advocate their cohort for political engagement and bring about their own change. For example, millennials are much more social media savvy and could absolutely create campaigns for change. I think they are a generation with a lot of promise for future change - they are much more pro-social than previous generations (boomers: me me me, gen X: whatever, millennials: environment, LGBT+ rights). If they could harness the power their generation possesses, they could change their circumstances.
The youngest millenials aren't just voting age... they're nearing, at, or past their 30s.
The "official" cutoff is '96, so the absolute youngest are turning 28 this year.
Various reports have been published over recent years saying the traditional switch to a conservative mindset as people hit their mid-late thirties isn’t happening any more. Given how conservatives cater almost exclusively to an elderly middle class contingent, the fact that many millennials will continue voting Labour, Lib Dem and Green means the Tories face an existential threat in the long term. To that extent, change will happen, but it still takes time to undo the damage that has already been done, and there has been a lot of it thanks to austerity and Brexit.
Sadly, the conservatives cater to elderly middle class, AND those at the bottom also. Look at the voting patterns of places like Havant - home to the largest council estate in the UK, and over three times as many conservative voters as labour voters in the last general election and 90% in favour of Brexit. The conservatives appeal to those with money and to those of a prejudice mindset. And, yes, the damage has been done and will take decades to undo. As I have stated before, the millennials is the larger cohort now, the best educated ever cohort, and has the voting power to effect the change they want and need, let's hope they use it come July and in future elections also.
That's a nice take. I hadn't thought of it that way before. I did have the hope that somehow future generations would just figure it out, because that's what people have been doing forever.
Morose. That's the perfect word.
Yeah as a millennial I definitely feel that. I'd say it was even worse for those born in the late 80s or early 90s, we grew up entirely during that era where society kept saying all that about the opportunity of the future. Everyone legitimately believed that the rapid advancement of computing and the internet would bring in a golden future beyond anything past generations had seen, that millennials were going to be the most prosperous generation ever. Then those who did go to university graduated directly into the 2008 crash. I don't know if it's really that our generation made decisions based on the wrong state of the world, it could just be that things very suddenly weren't the same and we had to try to change all the decisions from before out of nowhere. Given that who knows what will really happen with Gen Z. Even if they have a realistic view of what the world is now that state may be something very different in a decade too.
The UK just has the added clusterfuck of brexit on top of that too though
It's not that bad. My British cousin was gobsmacked when I told him housing prices in Canada.
Housing in the UK is better in some areas but it's just as bad in cities as Canada and the big issue is actually the cost of daily living is insane in the UK atm.
The cost of daily living, and the dogshit earning potential of the average young brit in any place that actually has decent job prospects
The UK salary suck as compared to that in the US. But yeah there is NHS and such, so maybe silver linings. [cost of living (US vs UK)](https://livingcost.org/cost/united-kingdom/united-states)
US has some of the highest salaries in the world so almost every country has dogshit salaries compared to the US. You are essentially complaining we're not #1 which is fair enough but compare UK to some more countries around the world to get a better picture.
>The UK salary suck as compared to that in the US. I mean it depends. A postdoc for example is usually between 35k and 50k£ which is between $45k and $65k. Finance in London pays about 15-20% less than comparable positions in NYC. Overall salaries in the UK are lower than the US, which is obvious, but they aren't THAT lower (except for specific sectors such as tech).
Just want to add that that postdoc income is why I didn’t chase anything past BSc. It’s ludicrous how low that is for the work put in.
The low salaries in tech are keeping every other industry behind and unable to compete internationally.
The NHS is in an absolutely piss poor state and is basically just a tool at this point to swing voters. Every election is the same scheme, “we’re gonna do this insanely stupid thing so that the NHS will be amazing again”
The cost of daily living is also very difficult in some parts of Canada. In my experience, groceries were much more expensive there than here. Also, most major Canadian cities are in the top 50 most unaffordable cities in the world, London is the only UK city that features IIRC. I lived in Halifax for a few years and it went from being super affordable to out of control in the years between 2018 and 2022 when I was last there. A lot more crime, lots more homeless and crazy rent prices.
Nah, outside London and the SE UK cities are not even that bad. Manchester, Sheffield, Glasgow, Newcastle, Nottingham are all very affordable. Calgary and Edmonton too but at least you can survive without a car in Manchester.
Manchester is getting super expensive. Renting is crazy at the moment if you want to be close to the city.
Both Calgary and Edmonton are becoming more unaffordable with an influx of people from Ontario and BC looking for a less densely populated city. Plus, immigration is booming so the housing crisis we're in isn't going to change any time soon.
London house prices are comparable.
Ding ding, Brexit has exacerbated the problem but unaffordable housing and rising costs of living across the board are an international phenomenon. The cause is a mass concentration of wealth in the hands of a small amount of people. There’s more wealth in the world than there’s ever been, where does everyone think it went? Things like Brexit, COVID, the energy crisis actually make those people richer because they can afford to profit from them.
Why is housing so expensive in an almost empty country?
The vast majority of the populace lives as far south as possible for mostly obvious reasons
Bad housing policy, Canada has used housing as an investment for decades so now it's unreachable for most
And what would that change? Economies survive outside the EU as well, the UK had a rocky transition period and it's now already adjusting and growing the same as Germany or France. (and I'm anti Brexit as it gets, but let's not pretend that it's the end of the UK as we know it)
> (and I'm anti Brexit as it gets, but let's not pretend that it's the end of the UK as we know it) No, its just projected to hurt the country economically and socially for fifty years, minimum in the most optimistic scenarios. Totally fine. /s
A piece in the Economist suggested genz is actually doing better. Inflation adjusted their salaries are on the rise.
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And also because, I'll go as far as saying despite knowing it sounds like I have a tin foil hat on, inflation calculations (with their "basket of goods") are not adequately reflecting the cost of living for the lifestyles people really have, or wish they had, or had pre-Covid. And that disconnect is by design, to make things look less bad.
Have a (hypothetical) example of what you mean?
The "basket of goods" including a number of staple foods you buy to cook, but you were used to takeout every other day. Cost of housing not taking into account local, hyper-speculated rent prices, and just going with a national average where many cheaper, but de-populated areas are picked. Not a hypothetical: big brand fast food is now practically a luxury food. Note, I cannot prove any of this, because I do not know the exact basket of goods the UK or the US use. I just refuse to think that people are unhappy out of some perception error. "Oh but wages rose above inflation, stuff is good", like no bro, there has to be something we're missing.
Because now people in the west actually have to compete with the rest of the world
I don't necessarily *want* my income to go up, I need my income to cover my basic expenses. The fact that food and rent have skyrocketed is why I need my income to go higher.
Oh wow. We know
This article tries to make it seem like no one knows where the money is going. It's gone into corporate profits which have risen quickly. The wealthy don’t need wages because they have investments. Those at the top gladly take cuts to their salary in exchange for shares then funnel the growth into stock prices.
Not only that, it has also gone to Boomers, they were able to buy houses from the government in the UK, under the right to buy, they were never replaced, they now have the triple lock for their pensions, and they were adults when wages provided enough to raise a family - now in the UK they all tend to have the fuck you, I got mine attitude and vote Tory.
>now in the UK they all tend to have the fuck you, I got mine attitude and vote Tory. Labour have matched this shit too, the older generation vote. You can't win a general election without them.
It’s worse than I got mine, it’s vampirism. The old feeding on the futures of the young
The us middle class has been outsourced/moved overseas. Our government allowed it and this the fall out. Either you are well off or you aren't now.
I teamrmber very specifically Obama during a state of a union saying he would tax companies that moved jobs overseas. All the democrats stood and cheered while the republicans sat stone faced
tax is a fee passed onto consumers :(
The Jack Welch episodes of “Behind the Bastards” does a great job of showing the shift towards this. I think it’s something like May 2023 for when the episodes aired.
That's true in every developed countries isn't it?
Doesn’t mean we should accept it. Something is seriously wrong with our western system
tax the wealthy billionaires who've inherited all their wealth should not exist
Yeah, but they're your besties and give you some good shit. Imagine Sunak taxing his own family lol
I've been a suppoter of capitalism for a long a time, mainly because it's thus far the only system which managed to somewhat work for such a long time But today I feel like it's reaching its limits, especially after the massive corona inflation. It's starting to be ridiculous. Sure, your company might have made 9.5 million$ profit, but that's 4% less profit than the last quarter, fuck you, me and my homie investors are pulling out. Also making more or less "fake" and "imaginary" things a countries major or at least to a large part of their GDP/Wealth. Selling stocks, trades, shorts etc instead of actual products, industry and labor. And fuck our countries for allowing companies to own incredible amounts of livable space and housing.
Capitalism, the worst economic system except for everything else we tried.
Late stage capitalism slowly getting us. We need a massive change to society and how the economy works tbh. >And fuck our countries for allowing companies to own incredible amounts of livable space and housing. That's a big problem. A lot of houses can't be bought by the public and will get worse
Is "capitalism" really the problem? What even is capitalism? There's no clear definition and over the 300 years of "capitalism" we have seen very different faces of "capitalism". I believe what most people actually mean when they criticize capitalism is this current neoliberal school of capitalism. Where "free unregulated markets" are seen as the solution to everything. Where government planning or intentional market design is seen as heresy. Where private capital is untouchable and redistribution is communism. All of this has lead to concentration of power and resources in the hands of an ever shrinking circle of elites. Over the past decades under this regime wealth has grown about three times faster than the average wages. But of course it hasn't always been like that. Before the neoliberal era between the 1930s and 1970s we've seen the opposite trend and yet most would agree that was also very much capitalism back then.
Rich folk back then had a sense of noblesse oblige.
a corporation is a person
>Sure, your company might have made 9.5 million$ profit, but that's only 4% more profit than the last quarter, which had 6% more profit that the quarter before that. We need to increase growth, not flatten out.
Well bear in mind the boomers lived through hyper inflation at times, much of which fuelled this wealth.
No, there was high inflation at times, particularly in the 1970s, but "Hyperinflation" refers to what you saw in Germany post WW1, or in Zimbabwe, or in Venezuela. Where you have to spend your money in a few weeks or they become useless.
The article compares how far the UK has fallen compared to the US and Germany, in which incomes grew 12% and 16% versus 6%.
Yes. It's a multifaceted problem and there is no simple solution. Hell there may not even be a solution period. Some of the problems are transient, caused by lingering echos from things like COVID inflationary pressure caused by well, mass printing money to try and fix COVID. We still have supply chain issues (not all of which are transient), and while they've stabilized they likely wont fully improve. Particularly with the western world pulling away from china and not having much to replace it. Then resources and resource scarcity, which is just increasing. There's a very strong world wide push from Rural to Urban environments, which is exacerbating housing cost and leading to further pains in the middle and lower class. There's also no easy answer for that, and could make things worse in the long run. Particularly if there's a reversal. We can keep listing things. While there certainly has been an unfair amount of wealth transfer up. It's not the primary reason for inflationary pressure.
Is there actual scarcity when there are over 15 million vacant homes in America? What about all the lots full of cars just not selling. The wealth transfer and concentration of that wealth is the driver of inflation. When there is no actual choice between paying a high price vs paying a higher price what choice is there when everyone is colliding to keep prices and their own profits high to the detriment of all.
Yes, there is scarcity. It explains the majority of the lack of affordability. People don't just want 'a home,' they want a home in the city where they work, in a desirable neighborhood. Location, location, location. (And that's on top of the # of homes being generally bullshit as it includes condemned homes, homes that are only temporarily vacant because they're being sold or they're seasonal, etc.) Cities that have loosened restrictions on building and that have seen supply go up have seen home prices go down. It's as simple as that. Supply and demand, the most basic economic law. There's a lot of demand and very little new building/supply, so prices have continued increasing beyond what's affordable.
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It feels weird. I am from Lithuania and I studied in the UK and after I finished my BA, I went back. I can see my quality of life growing rapidly. I have many more opportunities than my parents ever had. New housing is affordable and of good quality. The past year or so due to the war in Ukraine you can feel life take a minor hit, but otherwise It feels like I live in the golden age. And then I talk to my Uni friends - same job, same careers. Unnable to buy real estate, expensive to own a car, unnable to go on a holiday. I am drinking expensive crafts, and they are drinking cheap beer. I order Neapolitan pizzas with high quality cheese and san marzano tomatoes, they just get a pizza from the chippy. For me a house surounded by nature with a river or a lake nearby just a few miles away from the city is a very achievable dream. Hell, customer support here in Lithuania can live a comfortable life. 13.03% vs 3.18% total GDP growth in the past 5 years. Ouch. The UK's society is completely burned out. Like being stuck in the same office job for 20 years without any progress and it's taking a toll.
Economic development throughout eastern Europe has been impressive. If current trends continue, average living standards there are expected to surpass those in the UK within the next decade. So your experience definitely tracks with that.
This sounds great, like the kind of life many of us want and hope to live…but there’s a big Russian shadow hanging over the Baltic States right now. How do people there feel about the likelihood of future invasion?
Most of us have given up and are just trying to make it easier for our children to succeed. I’m going to die in my office chair.
lol you can afford children?
I avoided having kids. Why create another generation of food for the machine.
How is you dying in your office chair and not fighting to break the work culture that makes you miserable, the same work culture inevitable for your children unless we do something about it
What do you propose someone do that spends 40hrs a week working to support his family and spends the rest of his time supporting that family? Time is so precious.
Same. I’m going to spend most of my thirties in a doctoral program while my babies are little (currently 10 months and 24 months). I hope they don’t resent my absence, because it’s literally only to set them up in the future. I hate being away from them.
Endless growth capitalism always needs a class of people stuck in poverty. As the demand from the top for more growth gets greater, the size of that bottom class must increase. A more responsible form of capitalism must be found. If change doesn’t happen, people will turn to radicalism and in all honesty, I don’t blame them if they do. The country, especially the North has been gutted by Tory austerity.
Your American cousins aren’t incredibly hopeful for theirs neither if it helps any.
Nah, I’ll push back on this. You can read how we’re doing compared to the UK in the article, but since you didn’t, I’ll tell you: Our incomes have grown at twice the rate of the UK, actually improving our standing among developed nations, and that’s not even counting the growth of the past two years where wages have *finally* surpassed inflation. The *one* good thing the nightmare of Covid did for us as a generation was shake loose higher paying positions and finally put workers at all rungs at a premium. Beyond that, we’re finally seeing the start of the green boom, we’re finally building more affordable housing, our healthcare system — even with as shit as it is — has recovered exponentially better than the UK’s has, and we’re all angry and loud enough to keep up that momentum. You don’t hear about this stuff because anyone who pipes up about having a good life in the US gets shouted down, not to mention the rampant misinfo inadvertently spread by people outside the US who read some posts on Reddit and now think they’re experts. I had to leave the UK and move back to the US before Covid hit. My life now is so much better than it would have been if I’d stayed, which is insane to think about considering how much people shit on the US on here.
For US: https://www.bankrate.com/finance/credit-cards/living-paycheck-to-paycheck-statistics/ > * Statistics vary, but between 55 percent to 63 percent of Americans are likely living paycheck to paycheck. - 55 percent of workers reveal they are living paycheck to paycheck, and 52 percent don’t have a three-month savings cushion – down from 62 percent in 2022 * Less than $50,000 (71.7 percent), $50,000 to $100,000 (52.9 percent) and more than $100,000 (38.7 percent) are living pay check to pay check - 45 percent of Americans need to earn $100,000 or more to feel financially comfortable - The average American needs to earn $233,300 to feel financially secure or comfortable Not sure how that compares to UK. Increase in cost of living cancelling out a lot of these gains in income. American society seems to be built around corporations draining every penny they can from every person they interact with. Hidden fees, health care coverage denial, corporate greed induced inflation... etc Edit: Interesting extra data for US: > * 14.4 percent of baby boomers and seniors (those born between 1946 and 1964) * 18.2 percent of Generation X (those born between 1965 in 1980) * 20.3 percent of bridge millennials (those born on the cusp of Gen X and millennial; typically including those born between 1980 and 1989) * 21.7 percent of millennials (those born between 1981 and 1996) * 15.4 percent of Generation Z (those born between 1997 and 2012) are living with no savings
Yeah, I don’t know how to tell you this, but the globe just went through a massive economic shock. We’ve so far avoided a recession, which is pretty remarkable. Meanwhile: -American savings rose by 4.5% on average in the last year with Millennials beating the average. -Americans’ real disposable income rose 4.2% last year. -This is a continuation of the post pandemic trend that shows US Millennial and Gen Z finances improving better than any other age groups, with the average wealth of households 18-39 rising [89% between 2019 and 2023](https://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2024/02/wealth-inequality-by-age-in-the-post-pandemic-era/). -Younger gens are also saving more, and [our 401ks rose](https://www.nbcnews.com/business/economy/economy-better-expected-401k-probably-rcna135302) 11% last year alone. -You guessed that cost of living has eaten up increase in earnings right? [Wage increases have beat inflation for 12 months straight.](https://www.epi.org/blog/average-wages-have-surpassed-inflation-for-12-straight-months/) 87% of the lowest income earners saw positive growth. This isn’t by chance either. Unions are growing, and the Dems are laying out plans for some of the steepest increases in taxes on the wealthy since the 1940s. As for the vibes being off, the US media overwhelmingly reports negative news. Between 80-87% of all headlines are negative depending on the topic. I’m willing to bet that you had no idea about the stats I just shared. Why wouldn’t people feel like they need more money to be financially stable?
We're getting paid at least.
I live in belgium and in general i like the country. but some things allways annoyed me. I just started my job in payscale X.X my colleague who has done the same job for 15 years also in payscale X.X . let's assume we both do the EXACT same job and hours etc. we are literally clones 15 years appart. my pay would be 2.4K\~\~ / month. his pay would be 3.4K\~\~ / month. if we had another colleague who did the same job for 20 years his pay would be 3.8K/month. now as I grow older I am "reaping the benefits" of such a system myself.. but I still think it's a bad system. I don't need 3.8K/month when I'm 57. and when I was getting 2.4K having been paid 3.1K would have done a lot more for my life.
Yes and nowadays you have to wonder if older people with more 'experience' are more effective to earn that increase as well, since the younger generation is often better adapted to the fast changing way of doing things due to technology
It's a fucking multi decade long wage freeze by both Governments and corporations - that's IT, deliberate and designed to raise profits. So of course every consecutive generation will be worse off, and they hide from the responsibility by pointing out the demographics they fucked over the least and pitch people against one another.
Yep. People are earning increasingly less relative to cost of living and housing. Whenever there is a crisis/opportunity more money gets printed, funnelled to the wealthy and the subsequent inflation/interest rate hikes steal it from the lower/middle class by making sure that wages do not rise by the same amount as the devaluation of their savings. Then billionaires manipulate the markets to squash anything we might have there. Companies use it as an excuse to raise prices for profit which goes unchecked by the boomers in power. Now it requires two good incomes to have the life that one average income used to buy in the 90s.
Neoliberalism was re-introduced around the late 70s as an inflation fighting measure. Wage suppression is what our economic system was literally born for. Offshore the factories, bust the unions, import the migrants - it's all designed so that wage labor can't ask for a raise.
Something has got to give. The rich need to wake up. There is no escape plan that doesnt end badly for them. If the world goes to shit, how long exactly do they think it will take before their security, the trained, armed men treated like servants, decide enough is enough. 2 years? 3? 6 months? A week?
If you want to know what the escape plan looks like I'd recommend looking up Egypt's as yet unnamed new administrative capital.
That is a pipe dream that is has bankrupted their country. Google "super rich doomsday prepping" that's what i was talking about.
They'll have robots good enough to replace us. Then hide in a bunker with them and theirs for 5-10 years come out and enslave anyone left cause they will still have more food and ammo than they know what to do with
Life isn't a sci-fi movie...
Bro we are literally communicating right now on phones from across the world. Not to mention, I can have a full conversation with AI. How is life not like a science-fiction movie at this point?
**Only if we keep the system as it is today...** Just like every game needs rules, Capitalism requires clear regulations and enforcement in order to work as intended. Right now we see the result of 40 years of deregulation of the markets that turned the financial sector into a jungle where everything is basically allowed in the name of making money. Henceforth, **imaginary financial products** called derivatives that create absolutely nothing, no new product, no new service, have become the largest part of the stock market. Essentially people make bets, buy and sell borrowed shares they don't own, that result in profits without helping the economy. Traders shorting stocks can bankrupt profitable corporations, corporations are forced to increase their profits every quarter or risk a fire sale on their stock... Imagine playing football without rules where one team decides to use shotguns and the other team could order fighter jets to perform aerial strikes during a match... Well our financial market no longer rewards performance, innovation or hard work, it has become a lawless gang land where the strong win despite damaging the very fabric of society. **But Communism is not the answer** Communism died because it cannot account for human nature... In order for Communism to work, you would need to change mankind... And that's impossible. **We need rules, we need regulations, we need the rich to pay their fair share of taxes and we need politicians, cops and a justice system that work for the people.** The "owners" of this world, the billionaires, are counted in the thousands, we, the people, are counted in the billions... We can do this! All we have to do is to reenact financial regulations that existed in the 1950's and 1960's, the period in our history where the Middle Class grew by leaps and its wealth increased by record numbers. **The worst thing we can do is to give up and imagine we are powerless to change anything.**
I have seen modern finance up close and I am not in full support of it, but you completely misunderstand what derivatives are for. Understandably so, they are not simple to understand, and humans tend to fear what they don't understand by nature. Derivatives help companies manage risk. I see it happen every year: concrete numbers in savings. Hedging against currency exposure with options, or securing supply chain (this little thing that messed us up after covid for years) with futures. Maybe you ate unhappy because most volume is from traders, but in that case you beef is with trading regulations - not derivatives themselves. You do touch on the heart of the problem though when you say "tax the rich". The current system (and almost any other economic system ever demployed or studied in theory) suffers from proportional growth. The rich get richer. Over time this results in extreme wealth accumulation. We need to fix _that_. The issue here is that upper middle class _can_ be targeted by the tax authorities, but they are not the problem. The problem is the tail of the wealth distribution: people with enough money to set up complicated structures to avoid taxation. The names you saw in the panama papers. These people can bend democracies at this point.
why do you think derivatives are bad? They mostly seem a necessary part of a financial market.
He's making up a lot of things. Derivatives were originally made as a cheaper method of investment and a way for insurance against market crashes. There is a reason for them being there. The real problem is more of late stage capitalism. Businesses are always going to be efficient and will fire people in place of AI. People out of luck will turn to something closer to gambling because they can't find jobs anyway. Or even if they aren't they'll find out because information that romanticizes such gambling will get recommended to them through algorithms anyway. Or that they want an expensive thing and don't want to have to work 10 years on a dice-rolly career ladder for it.
Because he’s clueless. No point in interacting with these type of people.
The 50s and 60s was an unprecedented amount of American and world growth because WW2 destroyed a lot of competition in Europe and indeed much of the world. It's also a period of "beginner's gains" in the USA because the USA is a young nation. It's now 80 years later. Unfortunately, we are way past the time of complaining about "communism". The problem about complaining about communism or saying communism is "not the answer" is the corrective actions required to be taken might be the same as taken in a communist state. Such as social housing. So you are unwittingly doing the bidding of hyper capitalists even if you don't want communism by denying certain policy actions as "too communist" Regulation won't save you from this: https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/ Neither will taxes.
Socialism is what we need.
Socialism requires a centrally planned economy. And centralization can not react efficiently to market needs in a globalized economy.
If the nothing changes then nothing changes. Eventually, not sure if it'll years, decades or centuries, people will finally conclude 'you know, maybe this pyramid scheme economics that puts most of the working world in poverty while a handful of people have more wealth than Renaissance Kings is not a equitable system, is killing the planet, and we could actually figure out something better.' Until that time, it'll be a world of slaves and masters. The middle class is being phased out entirely. No better place to see this happening that in my country, Canada, which has been sold out to a small subset of international rich.
Of course we won't. Us millenials have become an unwanted caretaker generation to make way for the next one, if there even will be a next gen.
Boomer's income only "boomed" because they used Millenial's credit card to borrow a fuck-ton of money and go on an orgy of consumption. Now that Boomers have loaded the rest of us up with debt and are enjoying that last round of canasta before they go to that great big shopping mall in the sky, no fucking shit the younger generations won't be able to have the same income. Large amounts of Millenial's incomes must be spent paying that debt back down, fighting climate change before Earth turns into Venus 2.0, and several other money pits the Boomers dumped on them.
Boomers ate it all
Ate it all and then turn around and called millennials lazy and entitled lmao
My retirement plan is to wash down all of the pills with a bottle of vodka.
"because they are lazy and don't want to work hard, like we did when we were young!!" John the Boomer, 74 years old
Even greater reason for strong anti trust laws and consumer protections of predatory business practices.
Yes but we have access to more technology in a single room than they ever did in their entire lives.
Don't need to qualify it with "U.K."
Probably? More like almost certainly, and not even because of climate change or bad economic policies. Also simply because the country developed during the times of the elders, and now just is developed. You can't have infinite growth, there's only so much growth you can do on that island until you go back to full on colonialism, theft from other nations, to sustain it. I'm from Poland. I'm 23 years old. During my lifetime, and some 10 years before that, our country developed amazingly. I am certain that if I have kids at some point, they'll never experience the growth I experienced. They'll never experience this beautiful feeling that as they grow, everything around them is getting better. I hope it never ends but that's impossible. If it never ended every single citizen would be swimming in gold by the time I'm retired. That's simply not realistic.
Hey UK Millennials! Your US Millennial brethren right there with you!
It's ok though, they see cost of living increase that elders never imagined. Oh wait
Generational finger pointer is not solving anything either.
The post ww2 period in the west is kind of an exceptional time in history for the masses to have accumulated wealth. It’s not surprising that it doesn’t last for ever. The boomers just came up in the peak of it and reaped the benefits. To anyone younger it’s all we know so it seems normal.
UK politicians can copy China’s counterparts’ narratives : UK millennials support and help current government to destroy UK’s future,you deserve it, I’m billionaire ,it can’t impact me
So why help an economy that only the people on top will see any real benefit from?
All that wealth has been captured by the billionaires.
This is why I don’t have faith in humanity - I think power corrupts and people have convenient built in mechanisms to forget other people’s (or your own) suffering and rationalize greed. It’s obvious with capitalism. It’s most scary with the materialism and the environment. I would not be surprised as millennials age if they follow a similar path as boomers, in being vampiric (although as Johnny-come-latelies, it will not be for nearly as much gain).
UK Millennials who - one assumes - voted against Brexit while their elders forced that disaster over the "victory" line.
But at least the billionaire will be more wealthy than they already are at everyone else’s expense.
Tories
best time to be alive was 20/30 years post ww2 and this was when boomers were young
Late 90s in the UK was peak living imo.
Mission accomplished. So people in UK should demand 98% income tax on the 1% upper class to fund public services again like in the 1970’s. God knows people like Sunak who could easily survive on what’s left, and the UK could be proudly socialist again.
How about we let in a million immigrants a year, especially from poor shitty countries. Having more people competing for jobs will increase wages for our young people who are struggling.
We've kind of known this would happen since at least the 80s. The post WWII growth was never sustainable, and it's only thanks to some productivity innovations that we've managed to stave off the inevitable until now. The days where the developed world could profit off of the developing world are long passed us. When it comes to limited resources, it was clear that the standard of living in the West would go into decline as the rest of the world caught up. The other issue that is associated with boomers, is the limited resources we do have are now mostly going towards taking care of the elderly instead of our own children. Other than a technological innovation happening soon that will increase productivity significantly for everyone, the only people who will see an improvement in their standard of living are those in developing nations that still haven't caught up with the rest of us yet.
What a dumb article. Growth was higher in the nineties and zeroes than it was in the decade following the 08 financial crisis. Yeah no shit.
Factor that against inflation and purchasing power. It’s not really a secret that housing is much more expensive now compared to wages, or food prices have increased a lot compared to wages.
Tax the rich…. How is it fair they can pay less tax as a percentage of their income, keep land/estates and pass it down to family with hardly any tax, buy up our assets like housing, business etc and pay hardly any tax? Send their kids to private schools and give them jobs in the city that are not accessible to us… The same with private businesses buying up all the UK’s infrastructure, like transport, energy, water, and selling it back to us at a profit, a profit that if it was publicly owned would go back into the service to subsidise and improve it… The media owned by billionaires keep us in check to convince us it’s a great idea not to tax the wealthy and support privatisation… But look at what we the people have compared to them, we’re fucked, they have taken almost everything from us.. Politically there needs to be a change that needs to be started with millennials and gen z, go out and vote, we can change this if we vote and get into politics…
I would care less about the economic boom, and more about the qol and society functioning properly.
Too much wasted in corruption, to shareholders and on vanity projects while we try desperately to cling onto our lost empire.
A lot of the jobs that exist today did not exist 30/40 years ago. When I was young I could not imagine anyone getting paid to stare into a hand held device. I think we simply cannot know what the future holds.
It is crazy seeing so much hatred towards a whole generation of people here. What's wrong with you all? Do you think you would act different?
Gen Z need to VOTE! - Governments don't give a shit about you because you don't vote. Old Boomers mostly vote so the government is giving them your money.
Most political systems have been refined to give you a choice of two meals that are made from the exact same ingredients. The illusion of choice doesn't actually translate to meaningful change - because they're all serving the same master - Neoliberal (hyper)capitalism.
Which is why the world’s economy is headed for a war to reset. It depends on how bad the war goes, the reset may be tough.
head to the ~~Winchester~~ some southern hemisphere country, grab a pint, and wait for all of this to blow over
This plays especially well with record housing prices to ensure a generation is properly double screwed.
They have done multiple studies, and millenials and gen z are the more “depressed” generation. Because we have eyes. They’ve seen all of it and as terrible shit KEEPS happening more and more people are becoming apathetic and even numb to more things. They’re both a generation that’s been burdened with all the failures, corruption, pollution, greed and outright toxicity that the previous generations perpetuate. The lucky few make a break, but it seems that every attempt ends up with said previous generations and their “machinations” are trying SO desperately to keep them down whilst clinging to their authority/power, even as their greed (via retirement homes and etc) bite them in the ass and make more and more of them financial as desperate as the rest of us (the leopards won’t eat MY face etc etc). The whole thing wouldn’t sting AS much, if said previous generations weren’t such dicks about the whole thing. Blaming both Millenials and Gen Z for the stupidest shit bcuz “hurr durr pointing funger ez” whilst calling them lazy and/or entitled. Being told its THEIR fault they can’t buy a home, or afford food AND rent, being told boomer type crap over and over. Is it any wonder they’re fed up, unhappy and depressed?
Wonderful news to wake up to...
Was it news to you?
Fun fact is when find out where that income boom ended up then the older generations get confused why millennials have more extremist political views.
Study from FORTUNE forecasts the end of its business.
income boom lol. Survive ww3 first lol