Earlier quoted context omitted.
or just resignations
So much this. A lot of people are just checked out. Their plan if they get laid off? Take a flight to Mexico and live a better life while the storm passes.
That is the plan for Texas frost storms.
Gen Z have 86% less purchasing power compared to baby boomers in their twenties
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Re: Gen Z have 86% less purchasing power compared to baby boomers in their twenties
#22Boomers in their twenties were mostly working. Gen Z in their twenties is finishing college, working towards a master's or even a PhD. EDIT: No value judgments here. This is just a fact, people entered the active workforce earlier.
Makes sense, a Boomer in their twenties could buy a house and support a family of 4 with a high school education.
They also weren't competing with a bunch of people with college degrees so except at the highest end a college degree was less of a necessity therefore they could get away without wasting 4yr on it.
Re: Gen Z have 86% less purchasing power compared to baby boomers in their twenties
#23Isn't it a natural consequence of capital growing faster than wage?
> a natural consequence of capital growing faster than wage?
No. It’s the result of our real estate and housing system. (Stocks and Bitcoin can go up faster than wages without spiking CoL.)
Re: Gen Z have 86% less purchasing power compared to baby boomers in their twenties
#24How does one compare the purchasing power for a phone, which would be like a million dollars back in the day (if it was built to do a fraction of the things it can do now)?
You don't, because that's not a sensible way of looking at things.
Re: Gen Z have 86% less purchasing power compared to baby boomers in their twenties
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
It does for me.
Absolutely agree. This is a piece about relative poverty in disposible income against current inflation and % of post-tax income which has to go to rent/power &c against truly disposable income. I'm not in the cohort, but I still believe the model. Look to UK power bills, and Australian rents, and rates of home ownership since the 1960s.
I'm an older millenial, should be earning a good wage (doctor/consultant etc..) in the UK. Correction, I am earning a good wage. My parents can't understand how so much of my money goes towards mortgage, commuting costs, bills, childcare.
Some things are a lot cheaper. A midi controller, DAC converter, HDMI splitter - these are all cheap imports from china these days. Toys for kids are cheaper, but also cheaply made. But labour is so expensive - building work, window cleaning, childcare, carpentry etc.. Lots of things grossly expensive now - houses, disneyland, centreparcs, football and sports tickets.
It's only going to get worse. Hundreds of pounds more leave my bank account this year for energy costs, nearly a thousand more may leave my bank account next year for mortgage costs. I might just sell up and go somewhere else.
Re: Gen Z have 86% less purchasing power compared to baby boomers in their twenties
#26This doesn't make sense at all to me.
They're comparing income in constant 2022 dollars with the CPI. That's saying "if we adjusted historical salaries for inflation, then assumed that the constant 2022 dollar numbers were actually nominal numbers for each point in history, then people would've been able to buy much more stuff back then". Which is true, but not very meaningful.
The whole point of the constant 2022 dollar adjustment is to back out the effect of inflation. If 2020 average salaries in 2022 dollars were $44.2K, and 1970 average salaries in 2022 dollars were $24.6K then 2020 workers have 80% higher purchasing power for whatever basket is used for the deflator.
Re: Gen Z have 86% less purchasing power compared to baby boomers in their twenties
#27At least they can buy cheap TVs, right? I wonder if we can finally accept that just because things like phones and TVs got better faster than purchasing power got worse, doesn't mean that it hasn't been getting worse for a while. I'd even go so far to say that technical progress in a couple areas has hidden some pretty stark declines. Or at least allowed some people to point at shiny things getting better when compla…
What good is cheaper tech if we just use that to add more features and keep the same price?
You could get a TV for less than $50 if it had the same features and processing power as it did in 2002. Same for computers.
Imagine how cheap we could make a car that only has the features we had in the 90’s? Even if you include the mandatory passive safety upgrades.
Re: Gen Z have 86% less purchasing power compared to baby boomers in their twenties
#28My parents are boomers and frequently talk about the 2020s being 70s dejavu. My father entered his 20s in in 1968, and the tail end of his 20s in a deep recession and purchased a modest home in 1976 at a blistering 14% on 30 year fixed. His experience in the Midwest did not match with the assertions in the article.
Re: Gen Z have 86% less purchasing power compared to baby boomers in their twenties
#29No post body was provided.
Re: Gen Z have 86% less purchasing power compared to baby boomers in their twenties
#30It seems the annual income vs. CPI is the core chart here. Something happened in the decade of 2000-2010 to throw things out of whack. I'm not informed enough to know if that was the result of policy decisions or what, but I'd like to know how wage growth declined so dramatically during this time while prices seemed to maintain its projected linear growth.
Unsubstantiated guess: insane P/E ratios became the norm and maintaining them is harder when you’re raising salaries.