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Gen Z is going to have a hard time getting rich

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Re: Gen Z is going to have a hard time getting rich

#51

Post by passivate »

6chars wrote: post #34
oliv__ wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone in that toddler's family did provide the value, the money didn't appear from nowhere. And the public school teacher is not paid a market value by definition. Also, you don't personally get to decide what has more value than something else, the market does (which is what you are doing with the implied statement that the public school teacher provides more value than the toddler's family)

Ok fine, let me choose a different example. Has someone who became a millionaire daytrading crypto contributed more to society than almost* every nurse? * there are probably a handful of millionaire nurses out there Edit: to be clear, I'm not arguing that the market doesn't reward people for providing economic value to the world. I just disagree that that's the type of value that's relevant when discussing whether so…

>If two people make the same amount of money selling vacuum cleaners, but one kicks an orphan every time they make a sale, I don't think many would say they're equally virtuous.

You can judge each action a person takes, and the intent behind it (I do think intent matters) and and apply the virtuous label to those on a case by case basis. If you do that, it may well be that in aggregate one person could be more virtuous than the other - but in either case there could be some mistakes that a person makes. I think black-and-whiting the issue makes it needlessly polarized.

So that being said, 'contributing to society' is a very complicated topic. Everything is so inter-linked that you can make anything look good/bad depending on the framing.

I don't necessarily agree that by simply accepting a job as a nurse you are contributing more than a millionaire trading crypto. After all most people have their 401k invested in stocks and such. So it may very well be that someone who is day-trading may be growing the nurses 401k - (for example). Again, its just a thought - and like I said the framing can make anyone look good/bad. Wouldn't you agree?

Re: Gen Z is going to have a hard time getting rich

#52

Post by md2020 »

As a Gen Z’er that graduated college in December 2020 and was fortunate enough to have (and not lose due to COVID) a full time software engineering job lined up, I’m not sure how much this should worry me. Unlike a lot of US high schoolers, I was lucky to have a pretty solid personal finance class that taught me about Roth IRAs and 401ks and how index funds could set you up nice as long as you had some discipline. Although, in the back of my mind I couldn’t help but think that something would have to give eventually and that the average rates of economic growth we were being shown in class couldn’t continue. Despite this, I still started contributing to retirement savings as soon as I turned 18 with what little money I made from internships, because I thought at the very least having SOME savings would be good even if I was looking at getting 3-4% return instead of 5-7%.

I guess the point of this post is that even as a Gen Z person being told straight up, “You’re fucked”, I’m still of two minds about whether that’s really true. The company I work for is in the area of semiconductor lithography, and the technology is absolutely astounding to me. I simply don’t believe that an economy that produces this kind of equipment and is STILL innovating is going to slow down enough to screw over an entire generation. Battery tech for EVs, solar, RISC-V and the stuff SiFive is doing, fusion power (maybe?), biotech and health-enhancing tech in general, and so many more things give me the feeling that we’ve still got plenty of reasons to be optimistic. Curious to hear what others think.

Re: Gen Z is going to have a hard time getting rich

#53

Post by wrfitch »

jrsj wrote: post #42
blumomo wrote: post #39

I hope Gen Z has more precious goals than getting materially rich. Not that I’m against material richness. But I do hope that we as humanity evolve together on a spiritual level. There’s so much material value already created, so many jobs are automated. I hope that we humans strive for higher goods, fully develop our potential, and start to learn seeing again that there’s a universal order that includes a worldly go…

(this is all just my opinion based on personal observations. I haven’t done research into concrete data on this so take it all with a grain of salt.) So far they seem even more materially oriented. Because that’s how we teach people to be. We lie to children and tell them that the most important thing in their lives and their primary source of fulfillment is a career. When in reality most of us get that from our rela…

Hi, I'm part of Gen Z. Grain of salt, etc.

You're being a little unfair here, implicitly describing an entire generation as overly materialistic, mentally ill, socially dependent children. Honestly, it sounds like the Gen Z people you know might just be heavy social media users, since people of any generation that use these tools poorly have the problems you mentioned. For those of us that don't use the standard social media channels, growing up around the internet was an absolute blessing, with some minor flaws compared to the benefits it provided.

For examples of people that have benefited from being in this generation, look at the growing climate movement, or maker culture, which is democratising engineering in a way I don't think has been done before. Mental health isn't as much of a concern in this generation either imo; most people of my generation are far more comfortable talking about depression, anxiety, or autism than anyone else I talk to.

Re: Gen Z is going to have a hard time getting rich

#54

Post by achillesheels »

actually_a_dog wrote: post #46
achillesheels wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you are against the ability to speak unlimitedly? And who is to say your judgments are superior or that this individual’s public policy is necessarily inferior? People who have the ability to move things tend to move more things. I don’t see this as explicitly wrong, but natural. On the other hand, efforts to give masses of people disproportionate political rights have led to more murder in the last century than a…

> So you are against the ability to speak unlimitedly? And who is to say your judgments are superior or that this individual’s public policy is necessarily inferior? Yes, I am absolutely against unlimited free speech to the extent that it undermines democracy. I will say it explicitly here: no single, private citizen, whether as an individual or through some corporate proxy, whether that's some PAC or Amazon.com, sho…

I apologize if it came across as a straw man. After all, what is the purpose of voting if it is not to affirm a gradient of action in the determination of society, presumably for promoting the well-being of each other?

And I would wager that an individual who requires transacting in foreign markets as an effect of their properties will have more information and therefore more determination than yourself, a dog who has no concept of civilized record. :P Thus I do not find it abysmal that such individuals have more representation in the determination of public policy. I in fact have stipulated that blind dogmatism of democracy is actually harmful - which the American Republic was cognizant of.

(As to the point of how such personas with the need to be political to preserve their wealth and how it effects your locality, I am an advocate of laissez-faire whereby oligarch penetration in human communities is not possible because federal legislation was never intended to regulate neighborhoods.)

Re: Gen Z is going to have a hard time getting rich

#55

Post by HDMI_Cable »

jrsj wrote: post #42
blumomo wrote: post #39

I hope Gen Z has more precious goals than getting materially rich. Not that I’m against material richness. But I do hope that we as humanity evolve together on a spiritual level. There’s so much material value already created, so many jobs are automated. I hope that we humans strive for higher goods, fully develop our potential, and start to learn seeing again that there’s a universal order that includes a worldly go…

(this is all just my opinion based on personal observations. I haven’t done research into concrete data on this so take it all with a grain of salt.) So far they seem even more materially oriented. Because that’s how we teach people to be. We lie to children and tell them that the most important thing in their lives and their primary source of fulfillment is a career. When in reality most of us get that from our rela…

Yeah, I agree with you on that. I'm a Gen Z and I've noticed that social media has made the object for most people's desires material things.

> So far they seem even more materially oriented. Because that’s how we teach people to be. I don't know if this is Gen Z specific, but I do that we (as a generation) focus too heavily on material items. It seems that every generation cares about consumer culture and social status when they're young, but then quickly grow out of it as they age.

> And of course social media continues to reduce social interaction down its most shallow possible level.

Social media really does have that effect whereby everyone is constantly "on stage" and must perform; the only problem is that the performance is about petty drama and material gain over others.

> All financial considerations aside, Gen Z will probably be the most isolated, mentally ill, and least self sufficient generations in a very long time. And that’s because of the world we made for them.

I wouldn't discount people's ability to adapt: once the consensus comes around on social media (the worst offender being Instagram) we'll jump ship, and mental health will slowly recover. Isolation will follow, and for self-sufficiency, when people are dropped into situations for which they aren't ready, they quickly learn and become ready.

Re: Gen Z is going to have a hard time getting rich

#56

Post by HDMI_Cable »

wrfitch wrote: post #53
jrsj wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(this is all just my opinion based on personal observations. I haven’t done research into concrete data on this so take it all with a grain of salt.) So far they seem even more materially oriented. Because that’s how we teach people to be. We lie to children and tell them that the most important thing in their lives and their primary source of fulfillment is a career. When in reality most of us get that from our rela…

Hi, I'm part of Gen Z. Grain of salt, etc. You're being a little unfair here, implicitly describing an entire generation as overly materialistic, mentally ill, socially dependent children. Honestly, it sounds like the Gen Z people you know might just be heavy social media users, since people of any generation that use these tools poorly have the problems you mentioned. For those of us that don't use the standard soci…

> Honestly, it sounds like the Gen Z people you know might just be heavy social media users, since people of any generation that use these tools poorly have the problems you mentioned.

Quite honestly, who around us isn't a heavy social-media user? I'm Gen Z myself, and social-media is one of those vices where there is no 'healthy' amount to have, like drinking or smoking.

Re: Gen Z is going to have a hard time getting rich

#57

Post by ixacto »

mint2 wrote: post #40
thorwasdfasdf wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's been a pretty huge drop in living standards over the last 40 to 50 years. One interview with a person who lived through the 60s said, back then a painter could own a home, support a non working wife and six kids. These days, that same painter would have a hard time supporting himself, let alone a wife and six kids and house. one of the biggest drivers of wealth reduction is all the regulation that prevents mo…

Yeah we should be able to have cheap lead paint and asbestos and get rid of fire codes. Kids these days have too many IQ points. No regulation is not a viable solution unless we want a return to pea soup smog in LA and other areas, rivers that go on fire, and more lead poisoned children. Getting the balance of regulations is hard but it would be a lot easier if companies didn’t have to be forced to do it. But it’s un…

Houston does not have zoning, and the sky has not fallen there. What we have in the rest of the country is an incentive structure that is firmly on the side of rent-seeking and NIMBYism.

It is literally built into our tax code, with the mortgage interest deduction and California’s subsidy of the boomer Generation with the drastic reduction of real estate taxes.

It is ridiculously easy to solve the housing problem in SF, just tear down the single family homes and replace with high rise apartments at HK-level density. But the entrenched interests don’t want to do that.

Re: Gen Z is going to have a hard time getting rich

#58

Post by claudiulodro »

md2020 wrote: post #52

As a Gen Z’er that graduated college in December 2020 and was fortunate enough to have (and not lose due to COVID) a full time software engineering job lined up, I’m not sure how much this should worry me. Unlike a lot of US high schoolers, I was lucky to have a pretty solid personal finance class that taught me about Roth IRAs and 401ks and how index funds could set you up nice as long as you had some discipline. Al…

It sounds like you have a bright future ahead of you! You're doing great!

However, I don't think the average 18 year old is contributing to their 401k with money they made from their (presumably software development?) internships. :)

Re: Gen Z is going to have a hard time getting rich

#59

Post by md2020 »

claudiulodro wrote: post #58
md2020 wrote: post #52

As a Gen Z’er that graduated college in December 2020 and was fortunate enough to have (and not lose due to COVID) a full time software engineering job lined up, I’m not sure how much this should worry me. Unlike a lot of US high schoolers, I was lucky to have a pretty solid personal finance class that taught me about Roth IRAs and 401ks and how index funds could set you up nice as long as you had some discipline. Al…

It sounds like you have a bright future ahead of you! You're doing great! However, I don't think the average 18 year old is contributing to their 401k with money they made from their (presumably software development?) internships. :)

No 401k when I was 18, IRAs only at that point. But thanks!

Re: Gen Z is going to have a hard time getting rich

#60

Post by flukus »

skissane wrote: post #9
alexfromapex wrote: post #5

It seems like each generation is having more difficulty making ends meet ( https://theirrelevantinvestor.com/2021/04/01/the-generationa... ). Why hasn't this been improving? Is it because of regulatory capture by corporations?

Where I live (Australia), the biggest issue is the massive bubble in property prices. Housing affordability has gotten a lot worse over the last few decades. Arguably it has produced a massive wealth transfer from the younger to older generations. I guess inevitably that is going to be partially reversed when those older generations pass on, and leave some of their accumulated wealth to their children. But inheritanc…

> I guess inevitably that is going to be partially reversed when those older generations pass on, and leave some of their accumulated wealth to their children

By being tied up in property the timing of this is hardly ideal though. The costs in housing was paid when I was young, the transfer back will be after my mortgage is paid off and my main use of this transfer will be to fund my retirement. In turn I'll be relying on these investments to fund retirement and if I live long enough the next generation won't get any of my wealth until they're older and don't need it so much.

What would be a better way (other than cash) to transfer some of this wealth when the next generation is younger and need it more?

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