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Barely Half of 30-Year-Olds in the U.S. Earn More Than Their Parents Did at 30

wsj.com

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Re: Barely Half of 30-Year-Olds in the U.S. Earn More Than Their Parents Did at 30

#111

Post by vacri »

randyrand wrote: post #100

Could my parents afford an iPhone? No of course not. Among many other things. $$$ isn't the only quality of life indicator. When doing this calculation, you of course adjust for these things. an iPhone would cost billions of dollars in 1970. Is that the figure we should use? Probably not. But it means that these calculations are largely arbitrary since we don't know the true value of an iPhone to a person in 1970.

No smartphones, no internet, no entertainment-on-demand, fewer rights for minorities, fewer rights for women, less capable medicine, more expensive food and clothing, fewer shopping hours, less safe transport, less safe workplaces, more expensive and shorter-ranged travel, less environmental protections, etc, etc, etc.

All this stuff is conveniently ignored when comparing against previous generations.

Re: Barely Half of 30-Year-Olds in the U.S. Earn More Than Their Parents Did at 30

#112

Post by giardini »

vasaulys wrote: post #45
hollerith wrote: post #22

People who will have children ("eventual parents" for the purpose of this comment) are healthier, smarter and wealthier than people who will never have children. If the question is whether things have gotten harder for the average person, it is misleading to compare a group consisting only of eventual parents with a group composed of both eventual parents and non-parents. A better comparison would be 30-years-olds of…

I agree. I've seen a lot of people who have no intention of "settling down" or "having kids" become surprised when their peers who do exactly that become more "successful" (earn more money, move up in job position, etc.). I think making the decision to have kids instills a bit of discipline to get something stable in life.

vasaulys says> "I think making the decision to have kids instills a bit of discipline to get something stable in life."

I think this is not necessarily so. However...

I've seen a number of persons who have children and who believe your statement (or similar statements, e.g., "Having kids makes you more responsible", etc.) to be true.

And so they promote/hire a younger person who has chosen to pursue a family path rather than a more qualified person with a superior skill set.

Re: Barely Half of 30-Year-Olds in the U.S. Earn More Than Their Parents Did at 30

#113

Post by AnimalMuppet »

jpmattia wrote: post #49
harryh wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Price per square foot for housing has remained remarkably constant over time. People are spending more on houses than they used to because they are buying bigger houses.

Real house prices are currently up 44% since the nineties. https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-OOfzxFgh8YE/WD2XUyaZeqI/AAAAAAAAp... That is not accounted for by sq footage. Interest rates are a much more likely culprit.

> Interest rates are a much more likely culprit.

To expand on that a bit: Supply and demand in houses doesn't work on the price. Supply works on the price; demand works on the monthly payments. When interest rates go down, the same people can now spend more on a house for the same monthly payments, and so the price rises.

Re: Barely Half of 30-Year-Olds in the U.S. Earn More Than Their Parents Did at 30

#115

Post by psadri »

rhino369 wrote: post #65
crdoconnor wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the 0.1% can successfully convince people to blame their grandparents and magical robots for stealing all of the country's wealth then this trend is likely to continue.

It's not their fault we make less, but they should have personal responsibility for their own retirement, especially since the massive amount of growth in housing value and the stockmarket over their lifetime.

Is someone wealthy just because the house they own has grown in value? Practical wealth is how much you have relative to the cost of living. Someone in a $1M house is not necessarily more wealthy than when their house was $100K if all their other living expenses have also grown 10x.

Re: Barely Half of 30-Year-Olds in the U.S. Earn More Than Their Parents Did at 30

#116

Post by giardini »

cnnsucks wrote: post #66

This is WSJ red meat political controversy stuff. The story devolves into the usual "tax the rich" and anti-welfare state debate as any other political click-bait. I thought HN wasn't doing that for a week... I actually agree with the premise and many of the conclusions, and if it popped up on Drudge or Breitbart or whatever I'd be fine with it, but why here? Why must every popular site devolve into either a virtual…

Just a note: you _have_ to "tax the rich". Nobody else has enough money to pay the bills!

The question isn't whether to "tax the rich" or not - it's "How should we tax the rich" and How much should we tax the rich?" that we need to answer.

Meanwhile the correct answers are:

- Bring back heavy estate ("death") taxes to prevent wealth from being passed from generation to generation,

- Create heavy wealth taxes so that persons who are merely lucky don't monopolize the wealth.

Both the above should be done b/c goverment needs the money. Of course the other thing we need to decide is how much should the government spend, but that seems to have no limit these days.

Re: Barely Half of 30-Year-Olds in the U.S. Earn More Than Their Parents Did at 30

#118

Post by FreedomToCreate »

vijayr wrote: post #90
eridius wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Up until we finally get our collective heads out of our asses and implement something like Basic Income.

That isn't going to happen easily. My experience: I've talked about this to many people (highly educated, smart people) - most of them are adamant on the idea that human beings absolutely have to work to deserve anything, even food and water. This might very well be anecdotal, but very few people get ideas like Basic Income intuitively. It would likely take tremendous amount to first make people understand, then acce…

All humans have a psychological need to be needed. The current way to best feel this is to provide income for yourself and your family through work, and provide a service for your employer. This is extremely satisfying for a majority of people. Take away work and these two things collapse.

To get UBI to work, we need a new way for people to feel needed.

Re: Barely Half of 30-Year-Olds in the U.S. Earn More Than Their Parents Did at 30

#119

Post by shostack »

psadri wrote: post #115
rhino369 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not their fault we make less, but they should have personal responsibility for their own retirement, especially since the massive amount of growth in housing value and the stockmarket over their lifetime.

Is someone wealthy just because the house they own has grown in value? Practical wealth is how much you have relative to the cost of living. Someone in a $1M house is not necessarily more wealthy than when their house was $100K if all their other living expenses have also grown 10x.

If they are near retirement they could always reverse mortgage it. Our generation will not have that option.

Re: Barely Half of 30-Year-Olds in the U.S. Earn More Than Their Parents Did at 30

#120

Post by qntty »

randyrand wrote: post #100

Could my parents afford an iPhone? No of course not. Among many other things. $$$ isn't the only quality of life indicator. When doing this calculation, you of course adjust for these things. an iPhone would cost billions of dollars in 1970. Is that the figure we should use? Probably not. But it means that these calculations are largely arbitrary since we don't know the true value of an iPhone to a person in 1970.

Who cares about iPhones? They could afford education, healthcare and housing. These calculations are far from arbitrary. We have a reasonable idea of the sorts of things that people need to live a decent life, and these things have gotten more expensive. (Ok, so another commenter pointed out that maybe housing isn't as expensive as it's made out to be, but it's certainly not cheaper.)
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