Data and graphs showing millenials' bad economic odds • Hacker News Board

Re: Data and graphs showing millenials' bad economic odds

#21

Post by netsectoday » Sun, Jun 07, 2020, 4:21 PM UTC

darkteflon wrote: post #15

netsectoday wrote: post #7

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…

We must be the same age - this has been my experience exactly. You just have to find a way to laugh about it, don’t you. Laugh, and sob quietly into your pillow at 3am.

Laughing helps sometimes. My response has been something along the lines of exponential mental hardening.

Looking back each year just thinking "You had no idea what was in store and weren't completely ready, do better".

At this point that timeline is now in months.

Re: Data and graphs showing millenials' bad economic odds

#22

Post by cmehdy » Sun, Jun 07, 2020, 4:23 PM UTC

ghaff wrote: post #12

luckylion wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It's one of the things that makes it hard to do meaningful standard of living comparisons over time. And it's especially easy to be dismissive of electronics etc. relative to the increase in prices of elite educations and homes in elite cities. And the cost of healthcare (although it's also much better in many respects). However, I suspect a lot of people on the younger side would be pretty horrified at the level of…

Anyone transported to the past would be faced with the knowledge of what they have in this current era being compared to past situations. The main thing about people in the 80s is that they knew that what they had in the 80s was all there was. You likely can transport someone from 2100 into 2020 and they might be incredibly frustrated with the limitations of technology, communication, friction of social interactions, and so on.

As to the point of the person you're replying to, about cars and phones:

Those cars will also save many more people, which depending on the side you're on can mean that you're more likely to survive now or that there's much more "competition" likely to survive now.

Smartphones are better than the blackberries of a decade ago but they also shove social media down your throat in a way that had no equal before, which leads to significant impairments of mental health in younger generations.

There are many ways to look at the issue and we can almost endlessly zoom in and find discrepancies, but I wouldn't be surprised if a certain version of the central limit theorem ended up applying when comparing generations: the amount of seemingly random variables added up "even out" enough that the curves all end up looking like similar distributions, which can be compared.

Re: Data and graphs showing millenials' bad economic odds

#23

Post by elhudy » Sun, Jun 07, 2020, 4:23 PM UTC

george_morgan wrote: post #17

elhudy wrote: post #2

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 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 arts, pick up any hobby, or even teach myself to code for free. I can fly around the world and stay in hostels in other countries at the same price (or cheaper than) I pay rent in the US. If I run out of…

>Every other generation has all this now, too. But they also have houses and less debt.

According to the graph, G.I.s had much higher economic output per population than boomers did, and experienced some of the same technological advancements towards the ends of their lives (fast cars, color television, even early PCs).

Would you rather have been born into the G.I. generation or the boomer generation?

Re: Data and graphs showing millenials' bad economic odds

#24

Post by elhudy » Sun, Jun 07, 2020, 4:25 PM UTC

maxerickson wrote: post #14

elhudy wrote: post #2

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.

Absolutely agreeable.

Re: Data and graphs showing millenials' bad economic odds

#25

Post by bronzeage » Sun, Jun 07, 2020, 4:25 PM UTC

Debt and overleverage is stealing from the future. We got into 2020 with nearly every corporate in america deep into debt which used to finance buybacks.

The last 3 years of profit and growth were stolen from the future by the CEOs and past shareholders of these companies, and now the Fed is bailing them out by encouraging even more debt and leverage during coronavirus crisis.

Re: Data and graphs showing millenials' bad economic odds

#26

Post by xd » Sun, Jun 07, 2020, 4:25 PM UTC

elhudy wrote: post #2

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…

Don't let the downvotes get you down. Your understanding of the opportunities in front of you coupled with a positive-can-do attitude is what the world needs right now.

Re: Data and graphs showing millenials' bad economic odds

#27

Post by voisin » Sun, Jun 07, 2020, 4:33 PM UTC

netsectoday wrote: post #7

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…

Fellow millennial at apparently the same age. I agree with your sentiment. I remind myself that what goes around comes around. Boomers and GenXers bid housing prices up to absurd levels and stayed working longer than past generations (mainly because they failed to save when they could have and have to service debt that is unheard of in past generations). Eventually these assets will be poured back into the market and it will be a buyer’s market. Eventually they will retire and upper ranks will be ours for the taking. They won’t live forever - that wealth will disperse. Our best times are ahead. Theirs are behind. Stay strong and don’t play their game by overleveraging.

Re: Data and graphs showing millenials' bad economic odds

#28

Post by 4636760295 » Sun, Jun 07, 2020, 4:38 PM UTC

Yeah, this makes sense. I got it especially bad, since I joined startups that raised a huge amount of money on promises of riches, and then failed after burning through hundreds of millions of dollars. The founders cashed out before the companies imploded, but regular employees were left holding the bag. I have lots of illiquid startup stock that's now worthless, after about 10 years in Silicon Valley.

I do feel like the cards are stacked against everyone who isn't already rich. The system is designed to help keep the rich people rich, and make sure the poor stay poor.

I'm excited about the uprising, because we might finally be seeing a period of time that brings about real change. I'd love to see politicians abolished and replaced with real direct digital democracy. Politicians are a leftover from the colonial era when government representatives were necessary because it wasn't possible to have real democracy.

Re: Data and graphs showing millenials' bad economic odds

#29

Post by rdiddly » Sun, Jun 07, 2020, 4:46 PM UTC

I graduated into the early 90s recession. It shaped my outlook in various ways. Took about 10 years to finally get into a respectable job, and then 9/11 killed that. Another half-decade of underperformance, another tenuous success, then 2008 killed that. Another 10 years to finally get out of debt and start to get a foothold, and now this. Still don't own a home, although that's partly by choice. So I sympathize on the one hand, and yet, for n recessions millennials have been through, I've been through n + 1, so the talk about how uniquely screwed they are rubs me the wrong way a little bit.

Re: Data and graphs showing millenials' bad economic odds

#30

Post by Jeema101 » Sun, Jun 07, 2020, 4:47 PM UTC

api wrote: post #19

I am so nostalgic for the 1990s. 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 se…

I think I am about the same age as you and agree completely. That optimistic world of the 90s (and 80s IMO) no longer exists. The country never did recover from 9/11 and has stumbled from one crisis to the next ever since - the War on Terror, Iraq War, Katrina, oil crisis, subprime mortgage meltdown, Occupy Wall St, college tuition debt crisis, and now the pandemic and current protests. Where it all ends I don't know.