Will the generation that comes after millennials be even poorer?
Fed Says Millennials Are Just Like Their Parents, Only Poorer
161–170 of 284 posts
Re: Fed Says Millennials Are Just Like Their Parents, Only Poorer
#162It'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?
The main driver of "generations" is mass culture. In most of the world, culture is local, transmitted from parent -> child and from village -> child, based on a relatively stable set of people that the child comes in contact with. As a result, culture doesn't change significantly between children born at different times, though it may differ significantly between children born in different places.
America since roughly the 1920s has been different. The invention of radio and television allowed a small set of companies to dictate culture across the whole nation (and later, the whole English-speaking world). Moreover, their incentive is always to seek the latest hot fad rather than broadcast the same messages over and over; stations that do the latter (eg. public radio, classical music) get eclipsed by ones that don't.
As a result, the cultural experience of people born at the same time will be roughly similar. You can talk to most early Millenials about Transformers and My Little Pony and Voltron and G.I. Joe and Punky Brewster and Full House and they'll know what you're talking about. You can talk to most baby boomers about Beatlemania and the Ed Sullivan Show and the JFK assassination and they'll know what you're talking about. You generally cannot talk to the former about the latter.
In other areas where mass-culture has been exported and widely adopted, you see generations arise as well. People have spoken about generations in Japan since the 1980s, and people are starting to talk about generations in China.
There's some evidence that the Internet is actually destroying mass culture and the concept of generations with it. Notice that the generation after Millenials hasn't even been named, and they also seem a lot more diverse in their cultural & musical tastes and a lot more accepting of diversity in general. But it'll take a while (a few generations, at least) before this really takes hold, assuming we don't get a major event that reverses it.
Re: Fed Says Millennials Are Just Like Their Parents, Only Poorer
#163Baby Boomers are directly responsible for all the debt in the country, they invented it to pay for their lavish life styles they couldn’t afford and so they invented debt to kick the can down the road to future generations, and payment has come due. 1950 federal debt was ~$250B now $21T. Credit cards didn’t exist before baby boomers now $19T in consumer debt. Student loans didn’t exist before the boomers, now it’s mo…
> Medicare/social security didn’t exist before the boomer generation
Patently false. In the US, Social Security was instituted as part of Roosevelt's New Deal in 1935. From a more global perspective similar systems have been around much longer.
Re: Fed Says Millennials Are Just Like Their Parents, Only Poorer
#164Earlier quoted context omitted.
Everyone is trying to give their children a better life, not everyone else's children a better life.
Propping up housing prices and NIMBYism isn't trying to give your offspring a better life. I guess by some math they would leave the house to the kids, but that will be when the Boomers are ideally 80 and their kids are already grandparents. Assuming the wealth isn't spent on end of life care (it will be).
A lot of people seem to think that withholding vaccines and using low fuel efficiency SUVs to transport their kids is giving them a better life, I don't have much hope of them considering broader economic outcomes. But they will sacrifice others' outcome (not to their face though) if they think it will further theirs even a little bit.
Re: Fed Says Millennials Are Just Like Their Parents, Only Poorer
#165Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree with most of this except the part about inventing debt; come on now, debt has existed as a concept far back into human history. EDIT: Yes all, I understand credit is now more easily available than ever, and I would argue that ease of credit is a substantial problem allowing for the transfer of responsibility to future generations. @infogulch: I agree with everything you said, but that is not what OP said, and…
Last evening while we were out to beers, a friend recommended me a book apparently reviewing precisely this history: https://www.amazon.com/Debt-First-5-000-Years/dp/1612191290
Yes, this was the book I was thinking of when I wrote my comment. Do read it, it's fantastic.
Re: Fed Says Millennials Are Just Like Their Parents, Only Poorer
#166Baby Boomers are directly responsible for all the debt in the country, they invented it to pay for their lavish life styles they couldn’t afford and so they invented debt to kick the can down the road to future generations, and payment has come due. 1950 federal debt was ~$250B now $21T. Credit cards didn’t exist before baby boomers now $19T in consumer debt. Student loans didn’t exist before the boomers, now it’s mo…
I agree with most of this except the part about inventing debt; come on now, debt has existed as a concept far back into human history. EDIT: Yes all, I understand credit is now more easily available than ever, and I would argue that ease of credit is a substantial problem allowing for the transfer of responsibility to future generations. @infogulch: I agree with everything you said, but that is not what OP said, and…
That is absolutely correct, paying back debt has existed nearly as far back as we have recorded history in the form of slavery / indentured servitude.
But, not to put words in OP's mouth, I don't think that's what OP was saying. Baby boomers have normalized the concept of average people using debt to get things they want now but can't afford, and millennials are the first generation that has grown up with it pervasively.
Debt is a powerful tool for enabling opportunities when the decision is highly calculated and considered. For example a business that can directly weigh a break-even point for going into debt to make an investment that would simply have not have been possible otherwise. Or perhaps buying a house (though that is a bit more debatable these days).
When people "just put it on the CC", that debt is not carefully calculated or considered. When people go to college without a path to a career that can pay it back it's also not calculated or considered.
Debt is like a scalpel, but individuals use it like it's a hammer.
Re: Fed Says Millennials Are Just Like Their Parents, Only Poorer
#167Baby Boomers are directly responsible for all the debt in the country, they invented it to pay for their lavish life styles they couldn’t afford and so they invented debt to kick the can down the road to future generations, and payment has come due. 1950 federal debt was ~$250B now $21T. Credit cards didn’t exist before baby boomers now $19T in consumer debt. Student loans didn’t exist before the boomers, now it’s mo…
> Medicare/social security didn’t exist before the boomer generation Patently false. In the US, Social Security was instituted as part of Roosevelt's New Deal in 1935. From a more global perspective similar systems have been around much longer.
Sorry Medicare and medicade. It doesn’t matter if similar systems have been around much longer, governments have been around much longer than The US government and none of them are $21T in debt.
Re: Fed Says Millennials Are Just Like Their Parents, Only Poorer
#168It'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 abo…
Generation x was coined by douglas coupland, an author (author of microserfs, incidentally)
Re: Fed Says Millennials Are Just Like Their Parents, Only Poorer
#169From 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…
Baby boomers were teenagers and young adults from the late 50s through the 80s. So the birth of rock-n-roll, the protest movements of the 60s and 70s, emergence of drug culture, the sexual revolution, disco, the crack epidemic, and the birth of rap. As a Gen X'er I can personally remember the mid-70s to the late 80s and the hate spewed out at baby boomers by previous generations. I don't think the Millennials have it…
Yeah, we were lucky. War was mostly over and all the debt hadn’t caused any problems yet when we were teens in the 80s and 90s.
Re: Fed Says Millennials Are Just Like Their Parents, Only Poorer
#170It'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?
Generations are a bullshit idea from the marketing/advertisement cesspool to give themselves makework. The idea that demographic trends are descrete or have some sort of constant period is ludicrous, but this stuff has so pervaded pseudo-intellectional relms of media that, yes, real scientists at the real US government have stooped to using them. Are they the original "fake news"? *I should point out that the "boomer…
Before you call gen x a bullshit name, I suggest you look up its origin.