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Millennials and Gen Z Increasingly Pessimistic About Their Lives, Survey Finds

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Re: Millennials and Gen Z Increasingly Pessimistic About Their Lives, Survey Finds

#171

Post by benatkin »

bfrydl wrote: post #97
ddebernardy wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the future is going to be a better place either, but I don't buy for an instant that it's a good reason for you to not have kids, or the actual reason you don't have any. Firstly, life is pointless and meaningless without children, or as a fallback without taking care of others. And secondly, why should you, who are aware of this, be the ones ending up not reproducing, essentially mimicking the storylin…

> Firstly, life is pointless and meaningless without children That seems like a very personal opinion you should be stating with much less certainty about other people's lives.

There's more to what GP said. It took me a while to figure it out:

> life is pointless and meaningless without children, or as a fallback without taking care of others

This implies that the type of people who genuinely don't want to have kids, and don't have some circumstance in life holding them back from having kids, don't care about others. It's not the first time I've heard it, but I disagree with it. It's the yuppie stereotype. It's wrong because there are parents who don't care very much about others, and people who choose to not have children that care a great deal about others.

It is, however, not quite as wrong as saying that people who don't have kids don't GAF, full stop.

Re: Millennials and Gen Z Increasingly Pessimistic About Their Lives, Survey Finds

#172

Post by algaeontoast »

internet_user wrote: post #60
danielecook wrote: post #53

Started chatting with a guy at the airport about work / careers. Within 5 minutes he started ripping on millennials and their work ethic. I am a millennial! Sucks to be saddled with debt after college, have lower paying jobs, and still be shit on by the older generations. And I have things relatively good.

I am also a millennial. The work ethic problem seems to actually exist (from my limited but numerous experiences, including my own), however I am convinced that it is due to learned helplessness. Just imagine hearing your entire life that the world is just about to end any minute now, the icebergs are melting, everything is polluted, everything is so very bad, financial depression, no jobs for you, etc etc. Seems lik…

As a millennial who's been saving about 80% of my take home income, I mostly believe the money problems our generation complains about (regardless of economic background, debt, etc.) is more linked to spending habits and a perception of what an "ideal" or "reasonable" lifestyle is.

For instance, I have a few friends who work at JPL outside of LA. They all make $110-120k TC and have ridiculous benefits (5% contrib to 401k even if you put nothing in and if you do contribute a 7% match) with 25 days vacation etc. They still complain that they "can't afford to buy a house" when they've put off saving after paying $20k for a "modest" wedding and spend $1600 on take out each month because they're "too busy".

I live within my means and still have a social life, but I'm still called cheap or questioned about "not really living" when I explain why I'm investing or saving money and not taking international vacations every 6mo.

Re: Millennials and Gen Z Increasingly Pessimistic About Their Lives, Survey Finds

#173

Post by masterj »

Consultant32452 wrote: post #52
WhompingWindows wrote: post #9

Social media's ills, rising wealth and income inequality, rising sea levels, mass extinction event, crumbling roads, shit wages, corruption in government and industry, governments overwhelmingly filled with representatives of other generations with different priorities...there is a huge list of reasons to be pessimistic and they are constantly thrown in our faces online.

Constantly hitting records for economic highs. Lowest unemployment rate for blacks and Hispanics in the history of recorded unemployment rates. Rising wages. Just took a huge step in eradicating HIV in the US by securing free treatment for 200k poor people every year. Between the technological advances in solar/wind/batter, renewed interest in nuclear, and shrinking CO2 it seems climate change is well on its way to b…

> Between the technological advances in solar/wind/batter, renewed interest in nuclear, and shrinking CO2 it seems climate change is well on its way to being solved

Do you realize that the most optimistic projections in climate change papers already assume massive improvements in these technologies? They also assume massive carbon extraction technologies working at global scale that don't exist yet. Even these optimistic scenarios have dire consequences, and we're not on track to hitting these at all.

If it were a matter of "small improvements in over time", the tech would be sufficient, but it's more like we need to reduce double digit % of CO2 emissions year over year for the next several decades. https://twitter.com/robbie_andrew/status/1129667484527804418

Some countries do have declining CO2 emissions, but the ones that matter: China, India do not. Unless dramatic action is taken, we're still a long ways away from a global peak in CO2 emissions.

Re: Millennials and Gen Z Increasingly Pessimistic About Their Lives, Survey Finds

#174

Post by avmich »

Afforess wrote: post #134
shanusmagnus wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This "losing the popular vote" narrative would be a lot more compelling (at least to me) if the elections were less close. It looks bad to win the Presidency and lose the popular vote, but I don't think it actually matters. In a nation of 300 something million, close enough to half want either candidate. The problems lie elsewhere. (The fact that I can say "either candidate" is part of it.) [Edit: I should have said…

So many problems with this. 1. 300 million people are not registered voters. ~50-60 million are. 2. First Past The Post means people are voting for the candidate they hate the least, not the candidate they prefer. 3. The election wasn't very close. 2 million votes more for 1 of the candidates in 2016. 4. The electoral college "matters" in that without it, the Iraq war wouldn't have happened, nor Trump. Saying it's th…

> 1. 300 million people are not registered voters. ~50-60 million are.

Each candidate of two in 2016 USA presidential elections got approximately as many votes. So total number of voted - not registered to vote - is twice as much.

Re: Millennials and Gen Z Increasingly Pessimistic About Their Lives, Survey Finds

#175

Post by jdoliner »

CodeCube wrote: post #129
B-Con wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Twice in the last 20 years - more than any other time in US history combined - The Presidential election went to the candidate that LOST the popular vote; These generations just lack a proper understanding of civics! An untrue claim[0] that's been copy-pasted for a while. It has happened twice recently and three times before that, stop making it sound like it's unprecedented. None happened in the 1900s, so it's ver…

Sure, that point of OP's post was pedantically incorrect ... but I think the overarching point they were trying to make is that the republicans haven't had a candidate elected by the popular vote since 1989 when GHWB was elected. Since then, both elections in which a republican president won the office, was while losing the popular vote ... that's THIRTY YEARS since the last true win. Looked at from that perspective,…

George W Bush won the popular vote in 2004 though.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_United_States_presidentia...

Re: Millennials and Gen Z Increasingly Pessimistic About Their Lives, Survey Finds

#176

Post by atemerev »

Draiken wrote: post #156
atemerev wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless you live in North Korea (and perhaps even there), everything that your life depends on is brought by businesses.

I see this canned response all the time. But it's a gross oversimplification of the issue designed to keep the ignorant happy. The cheap things from china, all your amazon crap, your iPhones and all the rest of the so called "nice things" of today's society are only gained through (near) slavery conditions elsewhere. This delayed effect on how bad things are that is now reaching rich countries like the US, but it has…

Yes, this is Marxism. Marxism was tried quite a few times already, particularly in the USSR. I was born in the USSR and lived there until it collapsed, so I am pretty familiar with what Marxist socialism used to look like. Thank you, I prefer capitalism, which brings prosperity, innovation and peace to the world.

Re: Millennials and Gen Z Increasingly Pessimistic About Their Lives, Survey Finds

#177

Post by xyzzyz »

emddudley wrote: post #107
xyzzyz wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A single mother working as a waitress at Denny's in the 1980's had more spending power than a college educated cubicle drone in 2019 Do you have any source to support this? Because real median personal[1] income went up almost 50% since then[2]. [1] — don't confuse it with real median household income, which didn't grow nearly as much, because of a significant rise in single-person households which pushes the median…

Best I could find... apologies for any mistakes below. Purchasing power in the U.S. has stayed roughly the same since 1964. [0] The median annual income for single women with children in the U.S. in 1985 was $16,431 [1]. Couldn't find information on just waiters/waitresses. I believe these are 1985 dollars? If so, that income is nearly $40,000 in 2018 dollars. The median annual income for waiters/waitresses in the U.…

I recommend using FRED data, they aggregate many data sources nicely. For example, you can see that median usual weekly earnings of women went up about 50% since 1980s[1].

[1] - https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252882800Q

Re: Millennials and Gen Z Increasingly Pessimistic About Their Lives, Survey Finds

#178

Post by ravenstine »

salawat wrote: post #74
rdiddly wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say just look for a job as a "programmer" then, but once you're hired, take every opportunity to a) learn and b) show off, skills in the other areas. Nobody really sticks strictly to their job description, do they? Maybe, but my idea is to be always stretching beyond it so they're eventually forced to update it, heh heh. Eventually you're "so good they can't ignore you" like Steve Martin said via Cal Newport.…

This is an economic anti-pattern. Good for building up social capital and references, but a losing economic move as organizations have neither obligation nor incentive to pay you for what you're actually doing, just for what they've hired you for. Speaking strictly from experience. Doing five different people's jobs, for the paycheck of one has gotten me a fair number of friends, and the companies I've worked at tons…

Personal time is valuable, and going "above and beyond" will more often result in lost time, no extra pay, and as you say, neuroses.

What a lot of people fail to understand is that established companies have no incentive to recognize people or reward efficiency. Once a company reaches a relatively low profitability threshold, efficiency is put on the backburner because effecting the existing patterns can cause a meltdown or make other employees obsolete. If you do extra work to make things more efficient or "better", that can be perceived as a threat to others in the organization because they'll feel inferior or maybe because what you are opportunity could lead to them being let go down the line.

Sometimes there's a good manager that will recognize and reward talent, but the vast majority of people want to show up to their boring job, push keys or pencils mindlessly, and then go home and watch Netflix at the end of the day. This includes people who are at the top. Trying to go above and beyond to impress people is, to them, a needless distraction and might actually lead to them having to do more work. Just advocating for an underling to get a meager salary increase can be a lot of work.

I've learned to only promise the work that is expected of me(i.e. what I'm getting paid for), and I've been a lot happier ever since. This doesn't mean I don't try to do a "good" job, but doing extra is asking for trouble and is an outdated means of getting promoted.

Re: Millennials and Gen Z Increasingly Pessimistic About Their Lives, Survey Finds

#179

Post by Buttons840 »

jakeogh wrote: post #101
dgabriel wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the last 6 years, my rent has gone up by about 800/mo. It's the same apartment.

Why rent? You are paying that money anyway. Get a FHA loan. You could be on the other side of that equation. Sure it seems bad for you, but in actual fact, the place you are living has gone up in value. That's unambiguously a good thing.

It's the same apartment.

The apartment is increasing in value.

I understand the economics of how this can happen, but I'm not becoming any more optimistic while trying to reconcile these two facts.

Re: Millennials and Gen Z Increasingly Pessimistic About Their Lives, Survey Finds

#180

Post by avmich »

B-Con wrote: post #169
CodeCube wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, that point of OP's post was pedantically incorrect ... but I think the overarching point they were trying to make is that the republicans haven't had a candidate elected by the popular vote since 1989 when GHWB was elected. Since then, both elections in which a republican president won the office, was while losing the popular vote ... that's THIRTY YEARS since the last true win. Looked at from that perspective,…

It's not pedantically incorrect, it's simply incorrect as well as partially misleading. It's an 11% occurrence rate now in a system that was designed to have this kind of feature.

It's simply correct if "never" is replaces with "not for a century", which conveys about the same meaning as what was intended.
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