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Fed Says Millennials Are Just Like Their Parents, Only Poorer

bloomberg.com

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

#171

Post by toomuchtodo »

jedberg wrote: post #160
kimmeld wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Social Security was founded in 1935, so before boomers ever were born, although it had a different feel from today's program. Social Security is funded (you actually pay taxes for it), but the rest of the government borrows from it quite recklessly which is why republicans want you to believe it's not funded. With simply upping the ceiling on the amount taxed into it we can easily fund it for the foreseeable future.…

Upping the contribution limit without upping the benefit would just be a hidden tax on the upper middle class, but not the rich, who do not work for salary. If you want to tax the rich, you need to raise the upper tax rates.

You need to implement social security taxes on investment income, not raising the SS taxable cap on wages, to accomplish this. It makes sense to not overly tax burden wage income (productive effort) while taxing investment income (rent seeking) at a higher rate, no?

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

#172

Post by toasterlovin »

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?

My personal hypothesis is that this is related to the fact that the people who drive cultural output in the U.S. (the Left, basically) take a hands-off approach to transmitting culture to the next generation. As a result, each new generation in this sub-population of culture creators has had to engage in a high degree of cultural re-invention to fill in the gaps.

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

#173

Post by rootusrootus »

oblio wrote: post #121
klodolph wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's hard for me to even grasp the idea of it. It's just an arbitrary label for people born in a certain period of history. These people generally have shared experiences that are different from the experiences of other generations. > Who draws a line between generations and why? Same people that draw a line between lemons and limes. It's sometimes a useful distinction so people remember it and use it. > People do…

> There is no sharp dividing line between lemons and limes, either There is, if you care about scurvy: http://nowiknow.com/dont-forget-the-lime/

That article says the vitamin C problem was due to how they were storing the juice at the time. For fresh lemons and limes does the small difference in vitamin C actually matter?

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

#174

Post by titzer »

will_brown wrote: post #126

Baby 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…

> Baby Boomers are directly responsible for all the debt in the country,

Not just that, but the sad state of infrastructure, the condition of the environment, and climate denial. If WWII was the crucible of the greatest generation, then the (relative) peace of the 60s and 70s was the cradle of the worst generation. We (I'm 38) are now inheritors of a pretty messed up world on a very dangerous trajectory. I hope we can muster the courage to face it instead of being led like zombies toward our tech fantasies (myself included).

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

#175

Post by empath75 »

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 an artifact of the wwii baby boom which did create a distinct generation. It’s starting to become fuzzier though.

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

#176

Post by wuliwong »

maxxxxx wrote: post #85
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 a very American thing. They like to categorize people and then assign attributes to that group. "Conservative", "Liberal", "Gen X", ""Millenial", "Baby Boomers" and so on. I also find it pretty unhelpful to think about society that way. I think Clinton for example thought that "women" would vote for her because they are "women" and all "women" have the same opinions.

>They like to categorize people and then assign attributes to that group

You mean like you just did?

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

#177

Post by eppsilon »

jopsen wrote: post #92
esotericn wrote: post #16

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 inc…

It's often lost on us how much more you can buy for a dollar today vs. 40 years ago (when corrected for inflation).

Excluding healthcare and higher education, unfortunately.

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

#178

Post by kimmeld »

jedberg wrote: post #160
kimmeld wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Social Security was founded in 1935, so before boomers ever were born, although it had a different feel from today's program. Social Security is funded (you actually pay taxes for it), but the rest of the government borrows from it quite recklessly which is why republicans want you to believe it's not funded. With simply upping the ceiling on the amount taxed into it we can easily fund it for the foreseeable future.…

Upping the contribution limit without upping the benefit would just be a hidden tax on the upper middle class, but not the rich, who do not work for salary. If you want to tax the rich, you need to raise the upper tax rates.

It's exactly the opposite of hidden. It literally shows up as a separate item on your taxes. However, I don't think most people actually realize that it's a regressive tax that goes away when you make more money. Though society is at a place where a lot of people don't care if elderly people starve and freeze to death just as long as the upper class get slightly lower tax burdens.

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

#179

Post by will_brown »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #129
will_brown wrote: post #126

Baby 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…

Well in My comment I expressly state the US federal debt was at $250B in 1950, so I know debt existed before baby boomers. My comment really set off the pedantics.

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

#180

Post by icebraining »

SaltyBackendGuy wrote: post #5
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…

> I have a hard time believing they had such widespread disdain for their kids as the boomers do It's always interesting when I hear boomers complain about millennials. Didn't they have an influence on raising the same generation they complain about?

Only the positive part :)
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