Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sorry for nitpicking, but 48 is not a boomer. She is a Gen X. Boomers are the folks born after WWII and before the oil crisis.
1948 is actually roughly within the OG "baby boomer" group, since it represents babies born to WWII veterans when they returned home to their wives. WWII ended in September 1945. And while there are variations on the years per generation, here's the breakdown per Wikipedia. The baby boomer generation runs from 1946 to 1964, X from 1965 to 1980, Millenials 1981 to 1996. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation As an a…
Gen Z have 86% less purchasing power compared to baby boomers in their twenties
191–200 of 314 posts
Re: Gen Z have 86% less purchasing power compared to baby boomers in their twenties
#192Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
TVs became cheaper because now companies have recurring revenue by selling ads. Same with other stuff, it got "cheaper" because the sellers found alternative monetization channels, which often are more anti-consumer.
Re: Gen Z have 86% less purchasing power compared to baby boomers in their twenties
#193Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would take straight up communism health care or ancap pay-or-die unregulated over our current bastardized system that combines the worst aspects of both.
Really? I remember a thread on reddit about the HBO series Chernobyl. A lot of posters who lived through it commented. One I recall said that root canals were free in the USSR, but you didn't get any anesthetic. Another commented that the hospital stay was free, but you had to bribe the nurses to take care of you. Having had a root canal myself, it's "no thanks" to free communist health care.
1) Unregulated ancap pay-or-die (or charity)
2) USSR style salute Lenin on the way into the doctor's office
3) Our system
Re: Gen Z have 86% less purchasing power compared to baby boomers in their twenties
#194Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Housing is another red herring, of course, because the average new American home is 2x bigger now than it was in the 70s. Roughly speaking 1 square foot of the average home costs exactly the same as it used to in the 1970s. [1] And the average family has become smaller. So yes, housing is more expensive in big cities but that's because of zoning as Mr. Andreessen will tell you. Just because houses have gotten bigge…
I have long advocated for Japanese-style federal zoning rules which would stop local municipalities from playing these games. I agree that housing is more expensive, but of course, housing is priced into inflation numbers - and wages have kept pace. Housing is a major driver of inflation. Part of the discrepancy here - and housing needs its own entire article - is how low interest rates factor into affordability. In…
Re: Gen Z have 86% less purchasing power compared to baby boomers in their twenties
#195The author apparently has no idea how to do CPI calculations. She somehow seems to be calculating inflation adjusted wage increases to CPI changes. Rather-- Median Family income in 1970 was $9,870 [0] Median Family income in 2021 was $79,900 [1] CPI in 1970 was 38.8 [2] CPI in 2021 was 271.0 Ratio of incomes = 8.1 Ratio of CPI = 6.98 So household income has increased more than inflation. Median household income might…
There have been methodology changes between 1970 and today.
My understanding is that you get pretty similar numbers with either methodology.
See more here for example: https://fullstackeconomics.com/no-the-real-inflation-rate-is...
Re: Gen Z have 86% less purchasing power compared to baby boomers in their twenties
#196The author apparently has no idea how to do CPI calculations. She somehow seems to be calculating inflation adjusted wage increases to CPI changes. Rather-- Median Family income in 1970 was $9,870 [0] Median Family income in 2021 was $79,900 [1] CPI in 1970 was 38.8 [2] CPI in 2021 was 271.0 Ratio of incomes = 8.1 Ratio of CPI = 6.98 So household income has increased more than inflation. Median household income might…
It turns out that they use a "quality adjustment" that takes into account the relative performance of a modern computer compared to previous years. The bulk of the 300-fold decrease in price is due to the fact that modern computers are many times faster than those made in the 1990's. But there's a problem with that: a consumer doesn't get hundreds of times more utility out of a computer. You can't have a hundred people in your house sit there and work on the same computer and achieve the productivity scaling which would warrant this adjustment.
In reality, you're paying for one computer an amount which is nominally within an order of magnitude of what you would have paid in 1997. So this adjustment has the effect of drastically skewing the CPI statistic in this sector. Furthermore, computers have only grown in importance. What was a luxury in 1997 has become a necessity today. Families often have multiple computers. Parents may work from home and use their personal computer for paying bills, applying for jobs, doing taxes, budgeting, or applying for government services, while children may use their computers for doing schoolwork, research, playing games. Everyone uses their computers and devices for communications. However, none of these tasks (besides playing games) has markedly improved or been made more efficient by the technological advances in the computers themselves.
Re: Gen Z have 86% less purchasing power compared to baby boomers in their twenties
#197At 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…
As usual, there's a few chart crimes in here. Chart 1 shows CPI and inflation adjusted wages on the same graph? Why? Inflation adjusted wages already take into account CPI. There's no sensible reason to plot these two on the same graph. The caption is "wages are up 80% but that didn't keep up with living costs" - you cannot draw that inference from this graph. This graph actually shows that in fact wages grew faster…
I guess the numbers you're pointing at do seem to point towards that I'm supposedly faced with provided with opportunities as they were, but I can't help but feel like I'm getting shafted somewhere along the way cause I'm pretty damn far from feeling like it does.
Maybe my timing is just horrible, I don't know - I did get out of school right after 2008, and wasn't financially ready to buy a home before mid-2020... But I just cannot subjectively recognize my situation in those numbers.
Re: Gen Z have 86% less purchasing power compared to baby boomers in their twenties
#198Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I was going to say "and how light we could make a car", but then i actually looked up some stats, and this was news to me: http://web.mit.edu/sloan-auto-lab/research/beforeh2/files/Ma... Car weight declined sharply from 1976 to 1982, then started creeping up again, but cars in 2010 were only about as heavy as cars in ~1979.
Re: Gen Z have 86% less purchasing power compared to baby boomers in their twenties
#199Earlier quoted context omitted.
Gimme something with '20's safety and fuel economy, and '90's features otherwise. Or, even better, an electric car without the computer screen on the inside. I remember 90's cars safety and gas mileage, and I emphatically don't want that.
Yeah that’s the expensive stuff. The touchscreens and other tech crap is cheap
In today's world of subscription heated seats, $9k to unlock pre-installed range extensions, and $10k FSD capability (though without the actual FSD)... I feel reasonably justified in disagreeing with you.
Re: Gen Z have 86% less purchasing power compared to baby boomers in their twenties
#200Earlier quoted context omitted.
My mother, a baby boomer ('48), worked as a waitress part time to pay her way through college in her 20's. My dad worked for ma'bell, and earned somewhere around $150k in today's dollars as an high-school-educated lineman when he retired (and was then hired back on to train). And that's with a fully funded pension plan. So, even if they were in the workforce earlier (they weren't, I (as a genX) was working part time…
Sorry for nitpicking, but 48 is not a boomer. She is a Gen X. Boomers are the folks born after WWII and before the oil crisis.