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

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

#161

Post by mulmen »

eridius wrote: post #156
mulmen wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

Many truck drivers own their own trucks and contract for the carriers so those are the ones that could buy self-driving trucks.

Regarding pricing I'm not so sure. If you run a trucking company and contract out driving to individual drivers that own their own vehicles you are paying for the service to get the cargo to its destination, you aren't paying for a person as much as a service.

I do agree though that in this situation truck owners would make less money but they would also have more opportunity to do something like purchase additional trucks or do other work such as last-mile driving to supplement the loss in long-haul income.

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

#162

Post by toomuchtodo »

maverick_iceman wrote: post #159
rhino369 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't judge people who didn't or couldn't save enough for retirement and are living on SS and Medicare exclusively. I like Socialist safety nets of those sorts, and am happy to pay into them. One day I will be old and sick too. We all will be, except those who die early.

I judge you if you didn't hold your government representatives accountable for excessive discretionary spending, which was borrowed out of Social Security and will need to be paid back with higher tax rates.

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

#163

Post by vacri »

mywittyname wrote: post #157
vacri wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

People whose identity is wrapped up in how hard they have it can have trouble when it's pointed out that maybe it's not so bad after all.

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

#164

Post by pessimizer »

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…

What's your reference on this? I've always thought that the smarter and the wealthier had fewer children later. Hence, Idiocracy.

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

#165

Post by pessimizer »

hollerith wrote: post #125
rubidium wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You said "A better comparison would be 30-years-olds of today versus 30-year-olds (whether the 30-year-old has or goes on to have children or not) of the past." This is exactly what they did and what the data shows. 50% of kids today make more than their parents, vs 90% of kids 60 years ago made more than their parents. I feel like we're missing each other points though...

Do see any material difference between these next 2 statements? "50% of people today make more than their parents" "50% of people today make more than people a generation ago made." If yes, do you see how the difference might be relevant to whether people today have it easier or harder than people in the previous generation?

Do you see any worth in noting these two statements?

"50% of people today make more than their parents."

"90% of people 60 years ago made more than their parents."

If yes, what is the problem that you have with this study again?

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

#166

Post by dragonwriter »

mulmen wrote: post #161
eridius wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

Many truck drivers own their own trucks and contract for the carriers so those are the ones that could buy self-driving trucks. Regarding pricing I'm not so sure. If you run a trucking company and contract out driving to individual drivers that own their own vehicles you are paying for the service to get the cargo to its destination, you aren't paying for a person as much as a service. I do agree though that in this…

> Many truck drivers own their own trucks and contract for the carriers so those are the ones that could buy self-driving trucks

Except they probably couldn't, because the carriers are going to lease self-driving trucks from specialized agencies that will exist exactly for that purpose, as they won't want the administrative costs of dealing with individual owners (which makes some sense when it's an owner/operator as an alternative to hiring a driver and buying/leasing a truck separately, but none when the truck is self-operating.)

So, since no one is going to be likely to pay them for use of the self-driving truck, there's no anticipated income stream with which to finance the purchase.

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

#167

Post by grzm »

cnnsucks wrote: post #98
dang wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I thought HN wasn't doing that for a week We weren't, but since a week turned out to be longer than needed and I was worried about the cost of continuing, we ended the experiment early: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13131251 . So it's back to the normal guidelines now. (The worry about continuing was because there was evidence that some people thought the change was permanent, and that was not the intention.…

Yesterday I reviewed all the headlines and saw none of the usual political click-bait sprinkled among them with their inevitable 200+ post flame wars. It was wonderful; like having a cast removed or getting a tooth fixed. I hope your experiment leads to a similar policy.

I had the same impression that there were fewer inflammatory comments, but am trying to keep two things in mind: one is that I know that I'm biased and would like to see quantitative data, and that there were submissions flagged on which I would have liked to see discussion by those on Hacker News. I think the data would be interesting regardless, but I don't think it would be meaningful because it wouldn't represent the HN that I'd like to see. I'd like to figure out tactics that reduce inflammatory discussion that still permit constructive discussion on contentious submissions.

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

#168

Post by pessimizer »

Infernal wrote: post #62

Is it just me, or does this seem like an effort to spin positive news negatively? Why not "Median income for 30-year-olds has increased since their parents were 30"? Or "Over Half of 30-year-olds earn more than their parents did at 30?"

If your child is two feet six inches tall at two years old, and two foot seven at 32 years old, they did get taller, but at a far slower rate than you would expect.

It's as if there had been no productivity gains in 30 years for the poor median 30 year old, while the fictional average 30 year old is doing better than ever.

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

#169

Post by kevinstubbs »

sp332 wrote: post #86
rubidium wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You must be exaggerating or living in New York/San Fran. Here in the midwest is is very reasonable for a top 20% income for 30 yr old age bracket to have only one parent work. If you're top 1% you can definitely afford a house in the suburbs and have one parent stay home.

Living near NYC/SF does include "large swaths of America".

I guess it depends how you define "large swath". Is it a certain amount of landmass or population, a percent of total landmass or population, or some other metric? I think this line is needlessly pedantic. It's reasonable to interpret rubidium's comment as just meaning "the expensive housing in the NY and SF areas are too expensive to be feasible for top 20% earners, as the OP said, but by and large, a middle class existence is possible for most land in America." Population centers with expensive housing may be inaccessible for the regular middle class (when top 20% income earner means only 60k/year or so based on 2010 data[0]). This isn't really the right data to use, because the pay for people in SF is different than say, somewhere in Missouri. With that being said, it seems clear that the American dream of a middle-class existence with only one working adult, isn't realistic everywhere for everyone.

I might be meandering here, but I think this reasoning is actually flawed or biased, because it was never true to begin with. A factory worker could never afford to live in the upscale street, right? The only difference now is that instead of a factory worker not being able to live on the upscale street, there are whole neighborhoods, downtown areas, and maybe even suburbs that are unaffordable to a typical middle-class family.

I haven't looked for data to support these ideas, and am very open to points for and against.

[0]: http://whatsmypercent.com/

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

#170

Post by ThrustVectoring »

branchless wrote: post #127
ThrustVectoring wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gold standard has nothing to do with it. What money is, at a fundamental level, is a promise you can later redeem for real goods and services. Why there's so much mortgage and student loan debt follows directly from the demographic changes - the retiring generation needs promises to provide real goods and services (both directly through saving, and indirectly through pensions and the like), so capital markets seek ou…

No, banks are creating credit. https://bankunderground.co.uk/2015/06/30/banks-are-not-inter... By creating credit faster than the underlying wealth creation of an economy banks are appropriating real goods and services and the wealth generation later (or rather now as they lent for decades like this) and they walk off with the goods whilst we all drown in asset inflation. I would agree that demographics played a big…

Credit is money - there's literally no distinction between the two. Precious metal currencies are only money because it takes way less systemic trust to believe that the bearer of precious metal coins can get things for them later. Gold-backed paper currencies are an interesting intermediate, basically adding trust that you can exchange them for the actual metal at banks.
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