Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Gen Z does not dream of labor

vox.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 510 posts

Re: Gen Z does not dream of labor

#151

Post by ceeplusplus »

skulk wrote: post #83
bufferoverflow wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with this narrative is that the job of the father isn't specified. He could've been a plumber/electrician/welder who would do really well in the current market. These jobs pay well above the minimum wage. The world has changed - simple labor that requires a few days of training doesn't pay much. Most jobs, with few exceptions, that require a decade of training, do pay well. That's why there's such a huge…

> He could've been a plumber/electrician/welder who would do really well in the current market. False. A plumber making $80k (US median seems to be around $60k) isn't going to be able to save up for a down payment if they're paying a typical mid-sized city's rent (~$1.2k a month). Not to mention housing costs going up during this period of saving up.

At 80k your post-tax takehome is $5000/mo even filing single in a high tax state. Take out $400 for health insurance, $800 for car+insurance, $1200 for rent, and you've still got $2500 for food, miscellaneous spending, Roth IRA, etc. Even if all those costs come to $2000 - unlikely, since the Roth contribution limit is $6k / year - you're still left with $500/month in savings. And that's assuming your partner doesn't bring in _any_ income, which is exceedingly unlikely.

If your typical rent is $1200, that means property values in your area are almost certainly low enough to qualify for FHA loans, which only require 3.5% down due to government subsidies. 3.5% of $450k is $16k - so it only takes about 3 years to save for that down payment.

Home prices are high _because_ FHA loans allow people to have greater purchasing power (among many other reasons like NIMBYism).

Re: Gen Z does not dream of labor

#152

Post by eulers_secret »

mgh2 wrote: post #100
eulers_secret wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is part of why I left my job. I had the realization that my dream (homeownership/2 kids) was untenable with my income (~$135K TC) in my area. I could certainly get the credit for it, but my life would be one long hardship living under wage slavery, being house-poor, having little free time, paying exorbitantly to watch others raise my kids, and not having the opportunities I currently have... I kinda gave up on…

Where do you live that is unaffordable?

I still live there, a suburb of Portland OR. I locked in a cheap apartment years ago that's now rent controlled, which makes my situation possible. I currently pay about half what new renters pay. Without it, I'd be stuck in wage-slavery anyways and couldn't take the time to self-improve like this.

Moving is an option (my partner has restrictions: No states with anti-abortion laws, which removes many inexpensive places), if I go remote. Seems like every other dev has the same idea and that's helping drive prices up everywhere - along with other factors, of course.

Re: Gen Z does not dream of labor

#153

Post by CraigJPerry »

poutine wrote: post #71
MisterBastahrd wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The average house sold in 1946 cost $5.25K. The median salary at the time was $3K. The average house sold today costs $374K. The median salary is $51K. You can argue that those houses that were sold back then were smaller, but they were also made of vastly better materials than modern home construction, and it's not like people even have the opportunity of buying those smaller homes unless they want to live in a slum…

While housing has indeed gotten more expensive you can't compare absolute prices. First you're getting a vastly different product today than in 1946. Consumer demands are far higher too. Also to compare affordability the metric for most people would be the median percentage case of mortgage payments vs the persons take home pay. When measured this way it's been hovering around 30% for the past 40 years in the UK. htt…

>> First you're getting a vastly different product today than in 1946

Is that true? Something like 40% of the UK housing stock was built pre-WW2. Sure they’ll no longer have a coal bunker and they most likely have had insulation upgrades etc. but a pre-WW2 house in 1946 is still a pre-WW2 house today. The modern build will have less living space, predominately through smaller room sizes but should be cheaper to heat.

>> Also to compare affordability the metric for most people would be the median percentage case of mortgage payments vs the persons take home pay

That lops off all the people who can’t afford a mortgage so i dont think that logic works.

Re: Gen Z does not dream of labor

#154

Post by endisneigh »

einpoklum wrote: post #126
endisneigh wrote: post #28

Curious how all of the issues are resolved. If workers (as they should imo) get paid more, it will result in more inflation, resulting in their purchasing power on key things like housing effectively not changing as inflation adjusts the cost of housing to be more expensive. I'm also curious to see if companies run by Gen Z pay better or worse than Boomer run companies. If they're not I don't see how the situation wi…

Wages in the US have been stagnant in real terms for decades: https://www.epi.org/publication/charting-wage-stagnation/ but the prices of houses have shot up massively. So, not sure why you are so certain that wages rising would lead to significant inflation in housing prices.

Your chart shows that pay has been up a lot. Why wouldn’t extra pay lead to inflation?

If you hypothetically doubled everyone’s pay you think that wouldn’t lead to significant inflation in housing prices?

In any case real household income is up:

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DSPIC96

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N

Re: Gen Z does not dream of labor

#155

Post by prpl »

eulers_secret wrote: post #90
burlesona wrote: post #14

> “My dad got a job straight out of high school, saved up, and bought a house in his 20s,” said Anne Dakota, a 21-year-old receptionist from Asheville, North Carolina, who earns minimum wage. “I don’t even think that’s possible for me, at least with the current money I make.” I think this is pretty much the whole story. It’s very hard to be motivated to work when you could save your entire adult life and still strugg…

This is part of why I left my job. I had the realization that my dream (homeownership/2 kids) was untenable with my income (~$135K TC) in my area. I could certainly get the credit for it, but my life would be one long hardship living under wage slavery, being house-poor, having little free time, paying exorbitantly to watch others raise my kids, and not having the opportunities I currently have... I kinda gave up on…

I bought a house with 3 kids in the bay area (San Leandro) on slightly less than $135k (wife stays at home), but I had a rent controlled apartment in SF for 9 years. I bought at a good time (August 2020) and was able to use 403b without penalty. Kids go to public schools. All three kids are in one room, but it’s a very large room, and we have a cottage which is my office for now but the teenager can go there later.

It’s possible but not easy (and harder now), and you have to be patient and careful and a bit lucky.

Re: Gen Z does not dream of labor

#156

Post by paulpauper »

finnh wrote: post #88
ixtli wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m a millennial and I feel the same way, but I think a lot of this is due to a privileged position we have in the labor force. It’s the whitest of white color jobs. We’re still exploited as any trade, but it’s easier to be an architect or a lawyer than it is to be a construction worker. Especially over time and with contradictions sharpening as they are.

High-skill tradespeople often make more than architects. Not at the star level, of course, but architecture is generally a poorly-paying field for the amount of schooling and intellect it requires.

unless we start seeing trillion-dollar building contracts, this will not change. Tech jobs pay so much because the stakes are so high when we're talking trillion dollar companies, first-mover advantage, and network effects. Architecture is the opposite of tech in this regard.

Re: Gen Z does not dream of labor

#157

Post by claudiulodro »

notreallyserio wrote: post #121
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> > “My dad got a job straight out of high school, saved up, and bought a house in his 20s,” said Anne Dakota, a 21-year-old receptionist from Asheville, North Carolina, who earns minimum wage. “I don’t even think that’s possible for me, at least with the current money I make.” This anecdote is presented as the norm, but it’s actually far from it. “Minimum wage” is the tip off that the journalist went out searching f…

> For all the talk about minimum wage jobs, only around 1% of jobs actually pay federal minimum wage. I see this stat a lot and it leaves me wondering how many people are within, say, 50 cents or 5%[0] of minimum wage. The percent of workers earning minimum wage doesn't seem that useful (and I guess neither would the figures returned for my request). In any case I'd find hours required to live alone within ~30 minute…

Also note that state/city minimum wage is often higher than federal minimum wage, so using only federal minimum wage stats is not a full picture. e.g. Washington's minimum wage is ~$14.50/hr, so nobody in that whole state is making federal minimum wage, but I doubt anybody is living well on "double the federal minimum wage" in most of the state.

Re: Gen Z does not dream of labor

#158

Post by paulpauper »

frontman1988 wrote: post #142
burlesona wrote: post #14

> “My dad got a job straight out of high school, saved up, and bought a house in his 20s,” said Anne Dakota, a 21-year-old receptionist from Asheville, North Carolina, who earns minimum wage. “I don’t even think that’s possible for me, at least with the current money I make.” I think this is pretty much the whole story. It’s very hard to be motivated to work when you could save your entire adult life and still strugg…

American boomers grew up in lot of privilege after winning world war 2. Now is a different time where the world is more competitive. A lot of jobs in manufacturing have gone to China, in the services sector to India. Dancing off on Tiktok and working at Starbucks won't give you a comfortable life like your parents had. So better start grinding those leetcode questions like the rest of the world does. American hegemon…

some people on Tiktok making good money with product placement, same for YouTube. Starbucks however is dead-end.

Re: Gen Z does not dream of labor

#159

Post by azinman2 »

spaniard89277 wrote: post #135
eulers_secret wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is part of why I left my job. I had the realization that my dream (homeownership/2 kids) was untenable with my income (~$135K TC) in my area. I could certainly get the credit for it, but my life would be one long hardship living under wage slavery, being house-poor, having little free time, paying exorbitantly to watch others raise my kids, and not having the opportunities I currently have... I kinda gave up on…

COL and everything, 135K is like the 1% in Spain. On topic: I have the same feeling. I'm trying to get a dev job, that would be a huge jump of income for me. But I'm 34, how much should I grind just to get "entry-level" stuff? I was pretty unmativated in my job, just coasting by and pretty much doing the bare minimum that allowed me to be in peace with myself. Remote work increased my productivity and my hapiness ove…

135k is closer to 1% in the US than you’d think.

Re: Gen Z does not dream of labor

#160

Post by tayo42 »

pydry wrote: post #131
madaxe_again wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s the thing. I know this sounds glib, but the barrier to entry is so low ($20 5th hand laptop will do just fine to do first-steps development), I can’t understand why the market isn’t flooded with coders. So many people say “oh I could never do what you do”, and I’m like “I’m a shaved ape who wanted to play computer games and accidentally ended up learning stuff, you absolutely can”. Then they just go on saying…

I know plenty of people who learned to code and never cracked that entry level job.

I almost left programming because I couldn't get past the interviews or deal with no one wanting to hire juniors. I don't have a cs degree. What a night mare. Dumb luck I am where I am now
Post reply on HN