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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

#151

Post by RUG3Y »

mulmen wrote: post #136
RUG3Y wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My uncle lives in an area where a new house must be on a minimum sized lot of 1 acre. A nearby area requires 5 acres for a new house! I'd never heard of those kinds of restrictions before.

I live in Seattle and while I am aware that not everyone lives in a similar environment the concept of a minimum 5 acre lot staggers me. I consider myself lucky to have 600 square feet . What kind of area has these rules and who sets them? To me a lot with 5 acres is officially "the country" where I would expect very little to zero regulation of what you can build.

He's in Western Washington, but not too close to Seattle. To him it's "in the country" but it's right next to town. I live in a rural place, "in the country" means something entirely different to me.

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

#152

Post by [deleted] »

lawpoop wrote: post #121
Jach wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Social Security lifted the responsibility of saving for their own retirement. It's not much use to blame them for following incentives.

You make it sound as if before Social Security, people saved for retirement because they recognized they had to. But of course they didn't-- because they didn't earn enough to save-- just like people nowadays. Social Security is insurance against destitution in old age. It really doesn't function to take away any saving incentive. It just keeps old people from being homeless and starving. http://www.wsj.com/articles/…

[deleted]

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

#153

Post by rqebmm »

mulmen wrote: post #149
soundwave106 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with Trump from that perspective is that Donald Trump is not exactly on the side of powerful unions, strong social safety nets, and taxing rich people. He did leverage anti-elite sentiment, but he did it unfortunately with walls and "keep the Muslims out", not unions, safety nets, and progressive taxation. Donald Trump as far as I know is largely anti-union, not on the side of more progressive taxation, a…

Trump was not a labor candidate and if there had been one in the race I think that candidate would have performed very well vs Clinton. Trump's strategy was successful mostly because he was allowed to continue unchallenged. edit: To clarify I meant that if there were a pro-labor candidate in the general election Trumps populist message would have been less effective.

Um, Bernie? He was quite pro-labor, he just couldn't get enough votes to beat Clinton.

Then again, neither could Trump, but here we are.

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

#154

Post by mulmen »

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 completely disagree with your premise. Can you cite any evidence of the claim that parents are "healthier, smarter and wealthier" than people who will not have children? In my experience the decision to have children is often not even a decision at all and is just something that happens.

The question is also not "whether things have gotten harder for the average person". The article clearly states:

"Economists and sociologists from Stanford, Harvard and the University of California set out to measure the strength of what they define as the American Dream[1], and found the dream was fading. They identified the income of 30-year-olds starting in 1970, using tax and census data, and compared it with the earnings of their parents when they were about the same age."

The question is the viability of an American dream based on opportunity for children exceeding that of their parents.

From the article:

“My parents thought that one thing about America is that their kids could do better than they were able to do,” said Raj Chetty, a prominent Stanford University economist who emigrated from India at age 9 and is part of the research team. “That was important in my parents’ decision to come here.”

[1]: http://www.equality-of-opportunity.org/

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

#155

Post by eridius »

FreedomToCreate wrote: post #118
vijayr wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Basic Income does not mean people cannot work. What it does mean is people can choose to work at whatever brings them joy, rather than working at whatever job is available to have the money to meet basic necessities. And for people who don't actually want to work, they have that option too.

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

#156

Post by eridius »

mulmen wrote: post #131
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.

I'm a supporter of basic income as an experiment but it is interesting to think about alternatives. Is basic income simply a stepping stone to some kind of Star Trek post-scarcity utopia where there is no concept of money or wealth at all? We survived the industrial revolution, is it not just human nature to adapt? One example I recently discussed with friends was the idea that most truck drivers may soon be out of j…

Truck drivers can't simply buy self-driving trucks and kick back while the truck does all the work. That would require them to still be paid the same amount, and if trucking companies still had to pay everyone the same amount then why even bother with the self-driving trucks? Or more generally, why would the trucking company even keep the truck driver on as an employee, when it would be cheaper for them to just buy the self-driving truck and use it, instead of leasing it from the truck driver?

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

#157

Post by mywittyname »

vacri wrote: post #111
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.

I'm not sure why you're being down-voted so much. It's undeniable that our quality of life have improved dramatically since 1940.

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

#158

Post by mulmen »

rqebmm wrote: post #153
mulmen wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trump was not a labor candidate and if there had been one in the race I think that candidate would have performed very well vs Clinton. Trump's strategy was successful mostly because he was allowed to continue unchallenged. edit: To clarify I meant that if there were a pro-labor candidate in the general election Trumps populist message would have been less effective.

Um, Bernie? He was quite pro-labor, he just couldn't get enough votes to beat Clinton. Then again, neither could Trump, but here we are.

Bernie didn't make it to the general election so he never ran against Trump.

Trump won the election by getting votes that mattered. We use an electoral system, not a popular vote. If the popular vote mattered both candidates would have run different campaigns so voter behavior would have also changed. It's possible that Trump would have still won the election if the popular vote were the deciding factor.

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

#159

Post by maverick_iceman »

rhino369 wrote: post #40
djb_hackernews wrote: post #10

Compound that with the percentage of income 30 year olds spend on housing, education, health care and child care compared to their parents and we have a recipe for disaster.

The cherry on top is that our parents generation, who made more and had access to cheaper house, education, healthcare, etc., still barely saved for retirement. Unless, god forbid, your parents drop dead early, we are going to be stuck supporting them for a long time.

You'll be supporting all the old people through Social Security/Medicare anyway.

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

#160

Post by gwright »

mulmen wrote: post #136
RUG3Y wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My uncle lives in an area where a new house must be on a minimum sized lot of 1 acre. A nearby area requires 5 acres for a new house! I'd never heard of those kinds of restrictions before.

I live in Seattle and while I am aware that not everyone lives in a similar environment the concept of a minimum 5 acre lot staggers me. I consider myself lucky to have 600 square feet . What kind of area has these rules and who sets them? To me a lot with 5 acres is officially "the country" where I would expect very little to zero regulation of what you can build.

For example, here is a zoning map for New Canaan, Connecticut a suburb of New York in south western Connecticut. About a 25% of the town is zoned for 4 acre lots, 50% for two acre lots, and 25% for smaller lots (just my estimates from looking at the map).

http://www.newcanaan.info/filestorage/9490/293/331/02zoningm...

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