11–20 of 81 posts
I question whether these generational comparisons are using the right statistics. In the very least they don't seem to paint a complete picture. Maybe I am biased because I'm a very successful millennial. I have the world at my hands. Access to written knowledge from any point in the history of time. Tens of thousands of video games and movies available for under $10 and/or a small subscription price. I can learn the…
I question whether these generational comparisons are using the right statistics. In the very least they don't seem to paint a complete picture. Maybe I am biased because I'm a very successful millennial. I have the world at my hands. Access to written knowledge from any point in the history of time. Tens of thousands of video games and movies available for under $10 and/or a small subscription price. I can learn the…
Interesting point. It's similar to how we consider inflation with regards to technological advancements. A cell phone still costs the same it did 10 years ago, but it's 5 times are fast now, so it actually got cheaper for that purpose. The car you can buy today is many times better than any car you could've bought 50 years ago. Relatively, both you and your parents could buy a car, and they may have more money to spa…
However, I suspect a lot of people on the younger side would be pretty horrified at the level of communications, information access, ability to timeshift, and just the general friction of everything including payments, shopping, and more a few decades ago.
I've said it before only half-jokingly. If I were transported back to my late-eighties job as a product manager, I'd quit in shear frustration after a week or two because of the almost complete lack of information and communications tools.
I question whether these generational comparisons are using the right statistics. In the very least they don't seem to paint a complete picture. Maybe I am biased because I'm a very successful millennial. I have the world at my hands. Access to written knowledge from any point in the history of time. Tens of thousands of video games and movies available for under $10 and/or a small subscription price. I can learn the…
That's great you've been successful. However, since your story doesn't mirror the majority of your peers, consider yourself an outlier. What can you do to help more people become as financially successful as you are?
I question whether these generational comparisons are using the right statistics. In the very least they don't seem to paint a complete picture. Maybe I am biased because I'm a very successful millennial. I have the world at my hands. Access to written knowledge from any point in the history of time. Tens of thousands of video games and movies available for under $10 and/or a small subscription price. I can learn the…
Reading this article as a millennial really hits home as I remember entering the workforce as a teenager mid 2001 as soon as I could drive (months before 9/11), re-entering the workforce as a young adult early 2008 as soon as I had a degree (months before the great recession), then building a company as an adult for two years and launching it January 2020 (months before the end of the world). There have been no break…
Laugh, and sob quietly into your pillow at 3am.
I question whether these generational comparisons are using the right statistics. In the very least they don't seem to paint a complete picture. Maybe I am biased because I'm a very successful millennial. I have the world at my hands. Access to written knowledge from any point in the history of time. Tens of thousands of video games and movies available for under $10 and/or a small subscription price. I can learn the…
That's great you've been successful. However, since your story doesn't mirror the majority of your peers, consider yourself an outlier. What can you do to help more people become as financially successful as you are?
Even though people of relatively recent generations were more successful on average, that didn't give them access to many of the services and capabilities that people just take for granted today. Pick your year--1970, 1980, 1990. Plop many people down into those years and they would not be happy even if they had a good job and could buy a nice suburban house. (Middle class people were generally leaving the cities during that period.)
I question whether these generational comparisons are using the right statistics. In the very least they don't seem to paint a complete picture. Maybe I am biased because I'm a very successful millennial. I have the world at my hands. Access to written knowledge from any point in the history of time. Tens of thousands of video games and movies available for under $10 and/or a small subscription price. I can learn the…
Every other generation has all this now, too. But they also have houses and less debt.
I question whether these generational comparisons are using the right statistics. In the very least they don't seem to paint a complete picture. Maybe I am biased because I'm a very successful millennial. I have the world at my hands. Access to written knowledge from any point in the history of time. Tens of thousands of video games and movies available for under $10 and/or a small subscription price. I can learn the…
There's ~0 reason for housing to get more expensive over time in countries where land is not scarce. It's an abject policy failure.
I am a young Xer, almost an old millennial, kind of on the cusp. I've wondered if this is a cognitive artifact of my age in the 90s, teens to 20, but I have asked older and even a few younger people and many have also expressed nostalgia for that decade. Boomers and much older Xers often agree.
My teens were rough anyway. It was not my personal best decade, but I would go back in a second... not necessarily literally but definitely to the zeitgeist.
I find myself unable to describe the optimism of that time to people who were not of age during it. The best I can do is encourage people to watch some old Star Trek TNG. You couldn't even write that today. Dark edgy music and culture was in, but that was an artifact of the optimism. Nobody wants a Nine Inch Nails or early Tool now because the world is darker than the music. Pretty Hate Machine would be journalism, not harmless cathartic emotional escape and fantasy.
For my money the optimism ended decisively on 9/11. The shift was incredibly deep and profound. We have never recovered, though a rally was attempted in the late oughts. That rally crashed into resentment driven identity politics; the alt-right and its fellow travelers or "cancel culture" on the other side. Superficial optimism doesn't stick and won't until we get past 9/11 and all it seemed to mean. The terrorists won.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's ~0 reason for housing to get more expensive over time in countries where land is not scarce. It's an abject policy failure.
There's plenty of inexpensive housing out in the not scarce land. It's just that a lot of people (for various reasons) want to jam themselves onto islands and peninsulas where land is scarce.
It's also the case that public policy can impact which areas are desirable, and whether more areas can be made desirable (for instance, by building usable mass transit).