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

Fed Says Millennials Are Just Like Their Parents, Only Poorer

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 284 posts

Re: Fed Says Millennials Are Just Like Their Parents, Only Poorer

#11

Post by sdegutis »

burlesona wrote: post #2

From the article: “What’s old is new again. The paper observes that some of the millennials’ parents were subject to similar baseless grumbles of "kids these days" from their elders.” I don’t know though. Seems like part of the nastiness of the times is the baby boomers constantly taking jabs at millennials. Perhaps the silent generation complained the boomers weren’t “frugal enough” but I have a hard time believing…

There was an article the other day that said divorce rates for millennials is down a notable amount from baby boomers, but without the marriage rate lowering. One way of interpreting this is that baby boomers have more selfish tendencies than other generations, and millennials are realizing that their parents' ways (including divorce) are selfish, and learning from their parents mistakes. If this is true, then it's perfectly in character for a stereotypical boomer to complain about millennials more than their parents complained about them.

Re: Fed Says Millennials Are Just Like Their Parents, Only Poorer

#12

Post by madeuptempacct »

Average expenditure at 30: $45,000

That's strange to me - is everyone living on debt? Factor in median household income for a fam with Bachelors degrees: $68,728, which is $52,000ish net of tax.

How are people spending that much?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United...

Re: Fed Says Millennials Are Just Like Their Parents, Only Poorer

#13

Post by whitepoplar »

iagooar wrote: post #6

It's funny how this "generation" thing only quite exists (as far as I know) in the English-speaking world. There is no such idea of generations of people where I come from. It's hard for me to even grasp the idea of it. Who draws a line between generations and why? People do not stop being born, nor do they magically change because they supposedly belong to an imaginary generation. Am I missing something?

It's easier to make clickbait headlines when you pigeonhole people into a "generation."

Re: Fed Says Millennials Are Just Like Their Parents, Only Poorer

#14

Post by eecc »

LiterallyDoge wrote: post #4

Millenials are killing everything. Except the economy. Boomers killed that.

Or perhaps the Neoliberal policies that are hard at work dismantling all the social safety nets that gave people hope and encouraged them to take risk without fearing that failure implies total ruin.

Re: Fed Says Millennials Are Just Like Their Parents, Only Poorer

#15

Post by gerbilly »

iagooar wrote: post #6

It's funny how this "generation" thing only quite exists (as far as I know) in the English-speaking world. There is no such idea of generations of people where I come from. It's hard for me to even grasp the idea of it. Who draws a line between generations and why? People do not stop being born, nor do they magically change because they supposedly belong to an imaginary generation. Am I missing something?

> Who draws a line between generations and why?

Market research organizations I think.

They segment people into generations (and smaller subcategories) in order to better understand how to sell them products and services.

They are marketing buckets.

The corporate mindset is so pervasive in north america, that we take on their concepts and discuss them even outside of their area of application.

This is why we talk about which movie 'grossed' the most on the weekend, instead of comparing movies on their artistic or cultural merits.

Re: Fed Says Millennials Are Just Like Their Parents, Only Poorer

#16

Post by esotericn »

I think the term "poorer", and the monetary analysis done here, is too high level to extract real meaning.

The average young person/couple that I know are able to do and buy far more than their parents (e.g. eat out, order takeaway, take holidays, go to bars, buy things for hobbies, buy clothes, ...).

They just don't own property and have no path that leads there.

In some sense you could say that they have higher incomes whilst having lower wealth, but that doesn't really capture it.

Housing just went bonkers which makes retirement impossible.

Re: Fed Says Millennials Are Just Like Their Parents, Only Poorer

#17

Post by adamnemecek »

madeuptempacct wrote: post #12

Average expenditure at 30: $45,000 That's strange to me - is everyone living on debt? Factor in median household income for a fam with Bachelors degrees: $68,728 , which is $52,000ish net of tax. How are people spending that much? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United...

People are in debt yeah. I lucked out but I know a lot of people with student debt.

Re: Fed Says Millennials Are Just Like Their Parents, Only Poorer

#18

Post by acconrad »

It's painful to see that younger people are worse off - poorer and life expectancy I see is down again. I thought we were trying to give our children a better life? How did we become so narcissistic that we don't even want to make future generations better off?

Re: Fed Says Millennials Are Just Like Their Parents, Only Poorer

#20

Post by sdegutis »

roymurdock wrote: post #10
iagooar wrote: post #6

It's funny how this "generation" thing only quite exists (as far as I know) in the English-speaking world. There is no such idea of generations of people where I come from. It's hard for me to even grasp the idea of it. Who draws a line between generations and why? People do not stop being born, nor do they magically change because they supposedly belong to an imaginary generation. Am I missing something?

You don't work in marketing/advertising. Companies need to segment populations of consumers with similar characteristics to effectively advertise, tailor products, and sell to them. One of the most common demographic dividers is age. Different "generations" are grouped together because the members of their population exhibit similar income and expenditure patterns on average.

Generations has been a concept long before marketing. I do wonder about who draws the line for where a generation begins/ends, but the concept is pretty clear: you are one generation, your children another, your parents another, your grandparents another. Hence the base word "generate".
Post reply on HN