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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

#421

Post by SamuelAdams »

rubidium wrote: post #327
SamuelAdams wrote: post #39

> Less than three in ten Millennials expect to stay at their current job for the next five years. Well yeah. I can stick around my current company for 5 years and get a 2-4% increase each year, or job hop every 2-3 years and get a 20% raise each time. With a market like this, why wouldn't you job hop? Loyalty to a company only inhibits you.

Just beware of first in first out in case of a crash...

During the 2008 recession I've seen people who were with a company for 20 years get laid off. At the end of the day, most people are signing an "at-will" employment agreement. Which means the risk is the same weather you move frequently or stay in place for a long time.

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

#422

Post by imtringued »

ac29 wrote: post #144
gizmo686 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except our per capita productivity has gone up, and we are not facing any fundamental shortages.

They're not making any more land in high-demand areas.

That doesn't mean it is impossible to zone for higher densities.

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

#423

Post by mac01021 »

Zarath wrote: post #217
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.

Police state and mass surveillance are top of my list. Higher than global warming, higher than wealth inequality, higher than incompetent and corrupt governments.

Why? Concretely, how do you see the police state and mass surveillance impacting your life in a way that is more profound than the effects of global warming etc?

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

#424

Post by mac01021 »

thrower123 wrote: post #411
wickoff wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Economic highs seem to be part of the problem. Only about 15% of Americans participate in the stock market, most of the rest of the world doesn't even have the access. The best investment opportunities are being reserved for the elites. 2009 housing crisis resulted in a massive wealth transfer to the people who happened to be in position to take advantage of it. Capital gains are the primary cause of inequality. Tech…

> 57% of Americans cannot afford a $500 surprise expense. This is mostly a self-inflicted problem. A little discipline and saving straightens this out in short order, if people can accept a little inconvenience to live within their means. But people have a shockingly poor understanding of personal economics.

We didn't choose to be undisciplined and financially illiterate. That came of ignorant or negligent parenting, among other things. (And they didn't choose, for the most part, to be bad parents. It's just that no one taught them to be suitably conscientious parents).

Expecting people to be critical thinking and deliberate in the way they conduct their lives, without first conditioning them to be so, has always been and will continue to be unrealistic.

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

#425

Post by mac01021 »

austincheney wrote: post #34
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.

It’s really hard to take that seriously. If social media is causing you heartburn then back away from it or delete your accounts. I deleted my Facebook account nearly a decade ago and deleted my Reddit account last year. Nobody is forcing you to be a drug addict slave of online media. Some of your list looks like entitled anxiety desperately in search of sympathy. For example you mention rising sea levels. Do you own…

> Do you own ocean front property or did you just list that for some abstract reason?

For one thing, "rising sea levels" is often used as a symbol, representing all the varied consequences of global warming, the most depressing of which may be global ecological turmoil, so you might consider taking it less literally.

For another, rising see levels are going to wipe some island countries off the map and displace a quarter of the Bangladeshi population, among other things. It doesn't seem unreasonable to be dismayed by the social unrest that will surely accompany those events.

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

#426

Post by mac01021 »

francisofascii wrote: post #83
austincheney wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s really hard to take that seriously. If social media is causing you heartburn then back away from it or delete your accounts. I deleted my Facebook account nearly a decade ago and deleted my Reddit account last year. Nobody is forcing you to be a drug addict slave of online media. Some of your list looks like entitled anxiety desperately in search of sympathy. For example you mention rising sea levels. Do you own…

Curious where the corruption measures are from? In the US, public trust in government is at historic lows. https://www.people-press.org/2019/04/11/public-trust-in-gove...

Corruption is hard to define.

Lying to get into office and pursuing legislation that is supported only by moneyed special interests are probably both corrupt things a politician can do, and they certainly erode trust in the government. But the don't get tallied up in the same way quid-pro-quo bribes do.

In many places and times, governments have been pervasively corrupt, so that for example, in practice you will never get a drivers license or a building permit unless you first bribe the inspector or officer who needs to award the permit. This type of corruption is on the decline in almost every country. To my (limited) knowledge it has been relatively rare in the USA throughout its history.

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

#427

Post by sjg007 »

JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #358
sjg007 wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Staying in a job or at a company also builds resilience.

More depth than breadth. You get good at navigating that particular organization. Which is certainly a valuable skill to have.

I don’t believe that, companies have to continually innovate to stay alive.

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

#428

Post by refurb »

Analemma_ wrote: post #318
refurb wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Climate change and mass extinction are the chief reasons I am pessimistic about my life. Can you name another time in recent history where the end of the world wasn't near? WW1, Great Depression, WW2, Mutually Assured Destruction, Swine flu, AIDS, Cuban missile crisis, etc, etc. The correct answer is it's always been this way and what we're going through right now isn't really all that new.

> Can you name another time in recent history where the end of the world wasn't near? WW1, Great Depression, WW2, Mutually Assured Destruction, Swine flu, AIDS, Cuban missile crisis, etc, etc. The key difference is that, with the possible exception of MAD and the Cold War, during all of those crises people were in near-universal agreement that there was a crisis, and were actively working to fix it. Climate change is…

during all of those crises people were in near-universal agreement that there was a crisis, and were actively working to fix it

I don't think that's accurate. Take AIDS for example, there were plenty of arguments over the right approach, with very little consensus. Even with WW2, there were plenty who said "America needs to stay out of this war" and "We shouldn't have used atomic weapons".

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

#429

Post by seattle_spring »

hiram112 wrote: post #350
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…

> life is pointless and meaningless without children This view won't be well received on a forum with a lot of millennials and Gen-z, but as a millennial myself (late 30s, though) without kids, I would actually agree with you to an extent. I've already lived and travelled the world. I've volunteered a bit. I've worked and saved money and can afford what I want. And none of these things really do matter the older I ge…

Get a dog instead. All the benefits and almost none of the drawbacks.

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

#430

Post by malvosenior »

mac01021 wrote: post #424
thrower123 wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 57% of Americans cannot afford a $500 surprise expense. This is mostly a self-inflicted problem. A little discipline and saving straightens this out in short order, if people can accept a little inconvenience to live within their means. But people have a shockingly poor understanding of personal economics.

We didn't choose to be undisciplined and financially illiterate. That came of ignorant or negligent parenting, among other things. (And they didn't choose, for the most part, to be bad parents. It's just that no one taught them to be suitably conscientious parents). Expecting people to be critical thinking and deliberate in the way they conduct their lives, without first conditioning them to be so, has always been an…

Expecting undisciplined and financially illiterate people to have healthy finances and a middle class lifestyle is also unrealistic.
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