Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Fleecing of Millennials

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 132 posts

Re: The Fleecing of Millennials

#81

Post by canuseeme »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #20

Boomer's may have accumulated a large amount of wealth, but that wealth is going to be hit hard by Baumol's cost disease. Right now the US has ~4 workers per retiree. That's going to be dropping to about 2 in the next few decades. And despite frantic efforts from the Japanese, the services that the elderly need are hard to automate. These services generally suffer from Baumol's cost disease: nursing et al are very 1:…

> Right now the US has ~4 workers per retiree. That's going to be dropping to about 2 in the next few decades.

I think it's more like a 1/3 drop will take 45 years:

https://www.econdataus.com/workers.html

not that it changes your overall point by much.

Re: The Fleecing of Millennials

#82

Post by gdfasfklshg4 »

war1025 wrote: post #75
diogenescynic wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There have always been people with bad personal finance. The difference is that the necessities that you cannot avoid all cost orders of magnitude more—-healthcare, housing, college, childcare. This means people how a smaller margin for mistakes and even one hospital trip can put them in debt for years/decades or bankruptcy.

The rules have changed and people are still trying to live like their parents did. Healthcare is expensive. If you are on Obamacare, it is subsidized. Housing is expensive if you want to live in a "good" neighborhood. There are a lot of "okay" neighborhoods that people can afford just fine. College is expensive, but it really depends on which university you go to. As much as anything, the college issue is intentional…

One parent not working has massive negative externalities for everyone. For society the labour force shrinks and the economy follows. Your wife's career is effectively over after 5-10 years off for childcare. If you lose your job your family will be in trouble. If you get divorced you will not enjoy the results.

Re: The Fleecing of Millennials

#83

Post by hoaw »

echelon wrote: post #70
bengillies wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's worth pointing out here that the terms Gen Y and Millenial both refer to the same generation (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennials )

You're correct. None of the parent's argument makes any sense in light of this error. I don't understand why the post is being upvoted--the data is outright wrong! I sense that people may blindly upvote posts reporting figures, especially if they come with sources.

Generation X and Millennial isn't really a sharp transition. No generation is, but it is even more diffuse this time since there wasn't necessarily one or multiple "big events" at a fixed date. I don't know if parent's argument is correct, but what is being said is essentially early Millennial, ~1985 and late Millennial, ~1995. Huge difference in many e.g. housing markets. Once people born around the actual millennial gets old enough we might start talking about Generation Z instead.

Re: The Fleecing of Millennials

#85

Post by hoaw »

NeedMoreTea wrote: post #44
albertgoeswoof wrote: post #2

Does anyone know / remember if there were similar pieces written in the late 90s about people in their 20s and 30s then? Ie is this a trend that has always happened or something new?

They were a lost generation for different reasons. A little earlier than late 90s: The Thatcher/Reagan de-industrialisation through the 80s meant a huge number of children deprived of opportunity as whole regions and cities lost their major employers. In the UK it was effectively the start of our drug problem. Criminalisation had only arrived in the late 60s. Then we got the big recession of the early 90s. Most of th…

I am not sure it is the same thing, but maybe in the UK it was. As you say there have always been turmoil. But most of the time the young were seen as getting a better deal. Factories closed and older generations suffered, but the young got other jobs and at least to some extent benefited from the transition. Today we are talking about how young people get it almost universally worse from an economic standpoint and it is people in their ~forties that are winning in e.g. the housing market.

Re: The Fleecing of Millennials

#86

Post by jmull »

rnernento wrote: post #4

It's cute that they call it a fleecing, as if millenials could really have done anything about this. Sadly (I guess...) I suspect the generation responsible for all of this is going to end up paying some unexpected prices when the time comes as they age out of power and have to look to millenials for care.

That's a good point.

However, the narrative of "blame the boomers" is a con.

Blow this off if you want, but just realize that unless you're a russian bot or an ally of the American oligarchs you're working against your own self interests.

The con is blame the problems of one group on another group to separate them and get them fighting each other. This distracts everyone from the real causes of the problems. It's the same as blaming the brown people, which is pretty popular right now too. (Not a coincidence: in both cases the groups have a hard time understanding each other and it's very easy to identify the other group.) Another big one is getting people to identify as Ds and Rs and letting them blame and fight each other. (They are somewhat harder to identify, but the red hats help.)

It's important for millennials to understand this because without addressing the actual problem you are not going to end up with an actual working solution.

You'll go after boomers and still see no improvements. No doubt the people benefitting from the con will say you simply need to go after them harder. Guess what? That other group of people aren't actually demons and anyone demonizing them is bs'ing you, whether wittingly or not.

That's not to say boomers haven't benefited from the current system -- they have (generally). But their main advantage there is that they vote. (I don't know the full solution to that, but one thing is we have to make voting easier.)

I think the main problem is the massive money in politics. The people with money have always used it to influence politics in order to get more money. But they seem to have basically won outright at this point, with firm control of congress and the supreme court. The executive is mostly under control. The guy at the top is a wild-card but can be managed and is incompetent in any case.

Anyway, I wish I had a lot of answers but I don't. Just keep your eyes open and don't fall for the con. That's probably not enough to ensure a good outcome, but if you don't it's enough to ensure a bad outcome.

Re: The Fleecing of Millennials

#87

Post by hoaw »

RhodesianHunter wrote: post #58
alexgmcm wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's weird though - my girlfriend studies nursing and Geriatric Nursing is still one of the lowest paid specialisations with poor conditions and respect (compared to say working in the ICU). It seems residential homes charge the 'guests' loads and pay the staff (carers, nurses, cleaners etc.) very, very little.

Hopefully not offending anyone, but it is one of the most manual labor intensive and has some of the lowest educational requirements and cognitive overhead of the various nursing specialties. It also carries lower requisite insurance costs.

Also one of the best examples of what you lose in this changing society though. The decline of the middle class in general is of course problematic, but at least some of these jobs weren't worth saving as activities (though probably as careers). However that you can't have sustainable career as a common nurse, teacher or construction worker is a huge problem. Because these professions can't necessarily be paid a lot and also serve the public.

Re: The Fleecing of Millennials

#88

Post by rchaud »

kleborp wrote: post #9

This is an honest question I have that's tangentially related to this article (everyone on this forum is a lot smarter than I am so apologies if this is a stupid question): What is the catalyst for any action/change in regards to reversing these trends? I feel like I've been reading versions of the same article for the last 10 years with negligible change.

> What is the catalyst for any action/change in regards to reversing these trends?

My unscientific opinion on this is that these articles will continue to appear as living standards in rich countries continues to fall due to living costs outstripping wage growth, and the outsourcing of more and more work to other countries.

The wealth enjoyed by the rich world in the post-WW2 order has been built up by international cooperative agreements done to maintain peace but also generate income and build markets (Highway Bill, GI Bill, Marshall Plan, EEA trading bloc, GATT/WTO etc).

These days, it feels like we are experiencing the last trickle of dividends from those days. The structure of the economy has been predominantly service-oriented economy for decades now, but now it's about doing more with fewer people.

Realistically, I don't know what kinds of jobs will continue to provide middle-class salaries in the volumes that were available before. If you worked as a customer support rep, you've been offshored. If you worked as a trucker, automation is coming; you won't be fired, but you won't be driving as much and you won't get paid as much.

Thousands of trucker and miners looking to 'retrain' as front-end developers is a pipe dream pushed by politicians since time immemorial. There simply aren't enough jobs in those roles.

Re: The Fleecing of Millennials

#89

Post by rchaud »

DataWorker wrote: post #28
tinktank wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The people in power have to start representing the interests of the millennials. This will only happen when people of that generation are in power, or people in power are being influenced by them.

Millennials don’t seem to have a clue what’s in their best interest so I’m going to disagree with you. If there were any solid ideas coming from anybody in terms of helping millennials those ideas would have political traction. To think that only millennials can represent millennial interests is stupid.

> If there were any solid ideas coming from anybody in terms of helping millennials those ideas would have political traction.

The United States government is coming out of a month-long shutdown because the idea with political traction (the big, beautiful wall) was completely unworkable.

Let's not underestimate what flies and doesn't fly in the arena of American political thought.

Re: The Fleecing of Millennials

#90

Post by bryanlarsen »

hoaw wrote: post #87
RhodesianHunter wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hopefully not offending anyone, but it is one of the most manual labor intensive and has some of the lowest educational requirements and cognitive overhead of the various nursing specialties. It also carries lower requisite insurance costs.

Also one of the best examples of what you lose in this changing society though. The decline of the middle class in general is of course problematic, but at least some of these jobs weren't worth saving as activities (though probably as careers). However that you can't have sustainable career as a common nurse, teacher or construction worker is a huge problem. Because these professions can't necessarily be paid a lot…

Geriatric may be one of the worst paid of the nursing professions, but nursing itself has seen its salaries increase dramatically. Partially due to demand, partially due to increasing responsibilities, and partially due to the equal pay for equal work movement. I know nurses who make well into 6 figures. That's because they work way more than 40 hours / week, with much of that night shift, but even without it's not the horrible pay it used to to. Nursing is definitely a "sustainable career".
Post reply on HN