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Young adults are poor despite every metric which suggests otherwise

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Re: Young adults are poor despite every metric which suggests otherwise

#91

Post by abeppu »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #82
al_borland wrote: post #6

> It’s Hard to See My Parents Live So Lavishly While We’re Struggling While I won't deny there are some problems currently, I think people comparing where they start to where others end is a huge mistake and leads to a lot of unnecessary anguish. Someone in their 60s is supposed to be doing better than someone in their 20s. They had 40+ years to work and save. If they did it right, that will put them in a better posi…

Sure. But my excuse for denying my children would be that I also struggled at their age—zero handouts from either parent. But I also think that attitude is a load of shit. Early on in the 1980's I went to a community college to get the first couple of years of college out of the way. I sublet a room from a single woman (probably her landlord had no idea) and I rode a 10-speed bike between a pizza restaurant I worked…

In the early 2000s I saw a gubernatorial candidate talking to an audience of over achieving high school students and when asked about what he would do to make college more affordable. He told a story about how he waited tables to pay for college.

Totally not on his radar: changes in tuition over time, portion of budgets of public colleges that were coming from state funds (his tuition wasn't free but was close), vs changes in median hourly wages over the same period.

Very clearly on his radar: those students were not gonna donate to anyone's campaign regardless of what he said.

Re: Young adults are poor despite every metric which suggests otherwise

#92

Post by estearum »

danaris wrote: post #87
estearum wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Voluntary transactions (even if high-margin for one side) is not "robbery" 2. None of the examples GP listed has anything to do with high corporate profits

"Voluntary" is bullshit. You can call these transactions "voluntary", but when a huge percentage of the people in America do not make enough money to save, period , that means that all their income is going to necessities (with "a few small luxuries" also being a necessity for any human being). Many of the companies making the biggest profits are also the companies that own the highest percentage of their respective…

The reason people can't save is almost entirely due to the cost of rent/mortgage, which is overwhelmingly driven by the cost of land, especially since the cost of land is modulated directly by the local wages (so there's no such thing as high-income, low-cost areas).

Has nothing to do with "the biggest corporations" reaping "the biggest profits". The largest companies that sell basic needs to Americans make like 10% overall profit.

Re: Young adults are poor despite every metric which suggests otherwise

#93

Post by bryanlarsen »

bradleyjg wrote: post #72
al_borland wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The barrier to entry for investments used to be pretty high. Most people felt limited to what their employers offered. Even as access started getting easier, the knowledge was still difficult to get. Currently, the barrier to entry has never been lower, and the access to information has never been better. I don't see either of those things changing any time soon. Of course, even with that, basic financial literacy wi…

Yes, the finger pointing can and does go in many directions. Meanwhile the observed pattern is the boomers (actual boomers) get the golden path and every other generation doesn’t. Maybe they were uniquely virtuous and wise. Strongly doubt the xennials will be as rich in twenty five years as 70 year olds are now.

I'd definitely take the other side of that bet. Xennials are significantly richer today than boomers were 25 years ago, generally own their house and have a 401K or similar.

Xennials have benefitted from the same forces that made the boomers rich. They're not young adults.

Xennials were at prime house buying age when houses were really cheap after the 2008 housing crash.

Re: Young adults are poor despite every metric which suggests otherwise

#94

Post by Jap2-0 »

win311fwg wrote: post #65
like_any_other wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's look at those claims: "the vast majority of other children would belong to intact families" In 1975, the single motherhood rate was 15%. In 2015, it was 40%: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_parents_in_the_United_S... "communities like their own," In 1970, the US was 83.5% non-Hispanic White. In 2020 it was 57.8%: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_racial_and_ethnic_d... "and would speak English as a…

Except the claim that many parents must now to turn to private schools. Private school enrolment has declined since 1975.

Has it declined as much as we would expect, given the decrease in religiosity in the US over that time period? I've only found data going back to 1995,[0] which shows relatively flat numbers for the past 15 years or so.

(And the amount of parents which are interested in their children attending private schools vs those who have access to and can afford them is an entirely different discussion.)

[0] https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d23/tables/dt23_205.10.a...

Re: Young adults are poor despite every metric which suggests otherwise

#95

Post by win311fwg »

Jap2-0 wrote: post #94
win311fwg wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except the claim that many parents must now to turn to private schools. Private school enrolment has declined since 1975.

Has it declined as much as we would expect, given the decrease in religiosity in the US over that time period? I've only found data going back to 1995,[0] which shows relatively flat numbers for the past 15 years or so. (And the amount of parents which are interested in their children attending private schools vs those who have access to and can afford them is an entirely different discussion.) [0] https://nces.ed.go…

> given the decrease in religiosity in the US over that time period?

Has religiosity actually decreased? Christianity certainly has, maybe even all god-based religions, but the religion of formal education seems to have fully picked up the slack. There are a shocking number of people who believe that you will be stricken to the hell of flipping burgers at McDonalds if you don't praise the institution and attend college worship. And it seems likely that anyone who buys into that religion is prone to want to send their kids to private schools given the prevailing ideas about what private school offers.

> And the amount of parents which are interested in their children attending private schools vs those who have access to and can afford them is an entirely different discussion.

It is, indeed. There is a huge chasm between wants and musts. It would require an entirely different discussion to turn us towards wants. Although it is not clear what purpose that discussion would serve? What were you hoping to add by mentioning this?

Re: Young adults are poor despite every metric which suggests otherwise

#96

Post by bradleyjg »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #93
bradleyjg wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, the finger pointing can and does go in many directions. Meanwhile the observed pattern is the boomers (actual boomers) get the golden path and every other generation doesn’t. Maybe they were uniquely virtuous and wise. Strongly doubt the xennials will be as rich in twenty five years as 70 year olds are now.

I'd definitely take the other side of that bet. Xennials are significantly richer today than boomers were 25 years ago, generally own their house and have a 401K or similar. Xennials have benefitted from the same forces that made the boomers rich. They're not young adults. Xennials were at prime house buying age when houses were really cheap after the 2008 housing crash.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Case-Shiller_index#/media/File...

If you bought at exactly the right second of the crash, houses were where they were at the peak of the late 80s bubble.

Re: Young adults are poor despite every metric which suggests otherwise

#97

Post by memcg »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #21
flohofwoe wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Buying a house in their 20s... are you serious? If true and not just an urban myth, that must have been a US specific thing, maybe caused by the exceptional situation of the US coming out as the biggest winner of WW2. Anywhere else in the world you could be lucky to even move out of your parent's rented flat in your 20s ;) PS: also, what's the obsession of young people with home ownership

Possibly. I bought my first house in my 20s in the US, this would have been in 1980s. I remember the 12.5% interest on the mortgage.

We bought our house in 1982 with a 15.5% mortgage rate, refinanced to 11.25 in 1985, then 8.5 in 1987.

Re: Young adults are poor despite every metric which suggests otherwise

#98

Post by zeven7 »

ctoth wrote: post #85
standardUser wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those 60-year-olds existed in a brief and exceptional moment of wealth creation brought about by factors that are unlikely to happen again in ours or our children's lifetime. The problem being that the American ethos decided to pretend that brief moment was normal and sustainable.

What factors? Why are they unlikely to come about again? How do we make them come about again? You realize that your comment reads like "well, actually things shouldn't be getting better over time" I, for one, completely disagree.

They burned non-renewable resources at an unsustainable pace, like nothing ever seen before in history, resources that took millions of years for the Earth to produce, gone in a century, to make themselves wealthy - among other things.

Re: Young adults are poor despite every metric which suggests otherwise

#99

Post by cmiles74 »

mindslight wrote: post #66
archonis wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel you. My property tax has gone up more in the past decade than it did during the previous 3 decades. Cost and necessity of permits for renovations plus re-asessment of property after renovation for tax increase means every path forward is much more expensive than it would have been in decades past.

FWIW the traditional path for renovations was to add "sweat equity" by doing the work yourself, slowly and without permits. You can still do this today, perhaps even more effectively than previously with Youtube videos/LLMs. Although you might need to hire more "handymen" to replace what would have been bartered labor with friends/family (tying back to the social capital concept of the article). (I'm not trying to de…

IMHO, municipalities are much more serious about these permits and, at the same time, neighbors seem even more sensitive to any kind of noise or even a visual disturbance. If your house is close to the street, good luck keeping any kind of renovation off your town's radar.
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