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Gen Z does not dream of labor

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Re: Gen Z does not dream of labor

#351

Post by HWR_14 »

ghusto wrote: post #192
HWR_14 wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Isn't wealth _always_ more concentrated in higher age brackets? Yes. That's why the quoted factoid talks about "at this stage in their life". If you look back at boomers and genx, they had 4 and 2 times as much wealth as millennials do when they were the same age. > I've heard of millennials not turning up for work because they "didn't feel like working" that day. Why would that matter? Even if that happens sometim…

> Yes. That's why the quoted factoid talks about "at this stage in their life". If you look back at boomers and genx, they had 4 and 2 times as much wealth as millennials do when they were the same age. I missed and am continuing to completely miss this. Do you mean in the article? If true, would that align with the difference in population size (distribution of a finite amount of wealth to more people)? It would be…

> If true, would that align with the difference in population size

You're quite confused. First boomers and millennials are approximately equal in size, adjusting the boomers for back when they were the same age as the millennials. GenX is smaller.

Secondly, you seem to think I'm using averages. I'm not. The boomer generation had 4x as much wealth distributed over a similar size generation when they were as old as millennials. The GenX generation had twice as much wealth distributed over a population that was smaller.

> so am inclined to believe people are not getting fired more often.

If people aren't getting fired more often, what difference does your discussion about people calling in sick matter?

Re: Gen Z does not dream of labor

#352

Post by [deleted] »

hotpotamus wrote: post #346
teakettle42 wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Life isn’t easy. Sometimes you have to make hard choices. What’s your point?

You've inspired me, I'm going to make the hard choice and knock over a bank to build a better life. The police can't deal with all the crime these days, so I'd say the cost/benefit analysis is pretty good.

[deleted]

Re: Gen Z does not dream of labor

#353

Post by frurnish »

zdragnar wrote: post #292
skulk wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If not wanting to live in an enclave as a nominally second-class citizen is racist, then I don't know what to say. Let's not deny reality here, that's really what you end up being if you try to interact with the main racial group in a rural area, or at least the vast majority of them. It doesn't matter what race this happens to be, it's how people work. I know an Englishman who lives in an Indonesian village (not an…

Most of the tightly closed enclaves are by choice (refugee communities tend to stick together harder than others, from what I can tell). Obviously, not everyone lives in an enclave. What on earth makes you think they are second class citizens? They vote, attend school board meetings, own homes and live just like anyone else.

No post body was provided.

Re: Gen Z does not dream of labor

#354

Post by stepanhruda »

teakettle42 wrote: post #339
UncleMeat wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is still reasonable to call it a broken system even if "move to Idaho" is an option.

It’s not broken just because it fails to deliver a luxury you want, when and where you want it, for the price you want to pay.

Having unreasonable expectations would be okay, but people are calling it broken because a generation before this had this luxury but pulled the ladder behind them. We are supposed to progress forwards, not backwards.

Re: Gen Z does not dream of labor

#355

Post by teakettle42 »

heavyset_go wrote: post #347
ThePrankster wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, I had actually never considered "figuring something else". Thanks for this amazing insight. It's almost as useful as telling someone with depression to "just be happy". Rent in my town is one of the cheapest among bigger cities and I already live very frugally (public transit, only shop for groceries on sale and healthy food, don't go out to parties, don't drink, no addictions, no online subscriptions, only free…

They expect you to go move somewhere cheaper where your career prospects are stocking shelves at Walmart or serving food. Maybe if you're lucky, you could get a job for $36k from the one company in a 200 mile radius that's still hiring in your industry, but is on life support and won't be around in a decade. Also, please ignore the fact that its competitors have all gone out of business or left for better prospects i…

Do you believe people deserve an easy office job, high pay, and the ability to buy a home in the cultural epicenter of their choosing?

How, exactly, are we going to supply all of that to the firehose of people graduating with mostly-useless degrees and job skills?

Re: Gen Z does not dream of labor

#356

Post by jjav »

boplicity wrote: post #226
stolenmerch wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I honestly don't understand. When I bought a home I was literally making the US median income and bought an average priced house. My rent at the time was about a thousand a month. I had normal student loans and regular bills too. It wasn't easy but it didn't feel like a miracle either. Not saying someone making minimum can do this by any means, but there's a huge demand for labor in decent paying areas right now. I g…

The cost of a house has spiked to over 7x median income in the US, in a very short time. That's put buying a house out of reach for many people. Hopefully the bubble will burst -- but who knows? It could drag on for a very long time. Historically, the cost of a house has hovered around 4.5 to 5.5x annual median income. It's currently at the highest level it's ever been, at least according to this graph: https://www.l…

House price to income ratio doesn't tell the whole story because that doesn't include cost of mortgage. A more informative value to compare would be monthly payment to income ratio.

For example, when I bought my first home the price was around 4.5x my income. But the interest rate on that first mortgage was 8.25%

Re: Gen Z does not dream of labor

#357

Post by jjav »

ceeplusplus wrote: post #250
rtlfe wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope this person never has a kid. Enjoy your rent doubling to get enough space and either losing your partner's income or spending $3k a month on day care. Plus whatever crappy insurance you're getting for $400 a month is going to leave with $10k+ in bills for just birthing the kid.

From Kaiser's 2020 survey on healthcare plans, the average worker contribution for HMO/PPO plans for a family was $5000-6000/yr [1]. These are not high deductible plans (those are specifically broken out) so they're going to be pretty good insurance, especially PPO. So $400/mo is only underestimating the true cost by about $100/mo. You can't use ACA marketplace prices to judge what your average worker is paying. > sp…

> It costs $3200/mo to pay someone $20/h for 40 hours a week, in what world does day care (where one caretaker takes care of multiple children!) cost $3000/mo?

Tell me you have no children without telling me you have no children?

The daycare my child went to is $2500/month. Not quite $3K but I'm not in the most expensive areas. I have no doubt it can go over $3K in SF/Palo Alto/etc.

Re: Gen Z does not dream of labor

#358

Post by ceeplusplus »

jjav wrote: post #357
ceeplusplus wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From Kaiser's 2020 survey on healthcare plans, the average worker contribution for HMO/PPO plans for a family was $5000-6000/yr [1]. These are not high deductible plans (those are specifically broken out) so they're going to be pretty good insurance, especially PPO. So $400/mo is only underestimating the true cost by about $100/mo. You can't use ACA marketplace prices to judge what your average worker is paying. > sp…

> It costs $3200/mo to pay someone $20/h for 40 hours a week, in what world does day care (where one caretaker takes care of multiple children!) cost $3000/mo? Tell me you have no children without telling me you have no children? The daycare my child went to is $2500/month. Not quite $3K but I'm not in the most expensive areas. I have no doubt it can go over $3K in SF/Palo Alto/etc.

I saw in your post history you're also paying $2000/mo for health insurance. Maybe you're not making the wisest financial decisions? There's no world in which a rational person pays that much given the data and available plans. Even an ACA platinum plan (the top one) with zero employer or government subsidy is cheaper than that. I just looked and a Platinum plan in CA for a family costs $1400.

Re: Gen Z does not dream of labor

#359

Post by notacoward »

spamizbad wrote: post #107

I think there are several things driving this, not necessarily generational: Many employers (not the tech industry) enjoyed a weak labor market for roughly 2 decades. And each time when things began to heat up a recession would come by and cool things down - flooding the market with newly unemployed qualified candidates. This sustained discrepancy caused many employers "people management" skills to atrophy. Treating…

> unlike other generations, many Boomers actually saved for retirement

Not so much.

https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/03221...

Many other sources cite similar numbers, or even worse. $200K is not enough to retire on. In fact, I've read that Boomers staying in the workforce out of necessity is a factor making things worse for those entering the job market. I'm pretty sure having to support Boomer parents isn't going to help later generations either.

Fortunately, I think this part of your argument is not essential. You make a lot of other great points that are unaffected by whether this part works.

Re: Gen Z does not dream of labor

#360

Post by s1artibartfast »

Amezarak wrote: post #345
s1artibartfast wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a lot of confirmation bias in these stories. Half the issue is that people have been indoctrinated to expect home ownership and long for some golden age seen on TV that never existed. Home ownership was never universal in the US. It has been within a few percent of 65% since the 1960s[1]. It was always out of reach for the lowest earners, like those that make minimum wage. Some people whos parents owned hous…

It seems to me like there’s a big difference between “since the 1960s” and “always.” Is there no good data going at least 100 years further back?

I found this data going back to the late 1800s. It looks like 25% was the rate at the turn of the 20th century climbing to present levels after ww2

https://dqydj.com/historical-homeownership-rate-united-state...

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