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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

#211

Post by WhompingWindows »

humanrebar wrote: post #132
Waterluvian wrote: post #123

This is a very complex subject and I'm not trying to reduce it to something simple. But a big smell to me that something's just plain messed up is this fact: I make more money (inflation adjusted) than my parents did combined when they bought the house I grew up in. I would have to double my salary to afford buying/maintaining that house today.

Isn't that an argument that the inflation adjustment isn't suitable for this comparison?

It's an argument that vanilla inflation does not capture the changing costs of housing specifically. Considering housing is the #1 expense on most peoples' budgets, then yes, inflation alone is not appropriate. I believe that's the point the parent comment is making, and there is an implicit comparison there to all the economic analyses which compare childrens' incomes to their parents via inflation without accounting for housing.

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

#212

Post by WhompingWindows »

rootusrootus wrote: post #208
Waterluvian wrote: post #123

This is a very complex subject and I'm not trying to reduce it to something simple. But a big smell to me that something's just plain messed up is this fact: I make more money (inflation adjusted) than my parents did combined when they bought the house I grew up in. I would have to double my salary to afford buying/maintaining that house today.

There could be lots of reasons for that, however. Since you have not provided enough information to make speculation possible, I will mention my own to illustrate my point: My parents bought their house in 1970, when my dad was making about 15K. The house was about 30K. To buy that same house today you would need to make about 150K. Inflation adjusted, my dad's income then would only be about 100K now or maybe a litt…

Which town is this? Real estate is so much tied to location, its almost pointless to discuss a house's value without location.

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

#213

Post by [deleted] »

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?

[deleted]

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

#214

Post by dreamdu5t »

rsync wrote: post #108
dreamdu5t wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> who now have to live with, and pay, their debt. No you don’t. You don’t have to pay your parents debts. Not sure what “debt” you are referring to?

"No you don’t. You don’t have to pay your parents debts. Not sure what “debt” you are referring to?" I can think of lots of debts that boomers incurred that will need to be paid (or absorbed) by subsequent generations. - A vietnam war whose costs changed our economy and lead to the end of the dollars convertibility. - A transition to urban life without investment in public transportation leading to a half century of…

None of that is debt. You didn’t pay anything for the Vietnam war, and I’m not sure what you’re trying to say about urbanization and driving, but it has nothing to do with debt.

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

#215

Post by mjevans »

huehehue wrote: post #77
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…

They only need enough of an analysis to get a catchy article heading. Every day it's either "millennials are rich" or "millennials are poor". Millennials are poor: ~10% have $15k saved up https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/09/a-growing-percentage-of-mill... Millennials are rich: ~47% have $15k saved up https://www.sfgate.com/personal-finance/article/Millennials-... Avoid articles that stereotype any generation, because the…

Maybe 30-50 years ago having 15K saved up was rich.

What can 15K get you today? An OK used car, maybe, and it's like 1/10th of the down-payment that's expected on a house that's still too far away from work, which you can't expect to stay at because no one has a stable career anymore.

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

#216

Post by mjevans »

MrMember wrote: post #193
gambiting wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. I live the life of incredible luxury compared to when my parents were my age, definitely in terms of "life experiences" and material possessions....except for housing. Getting on the property ladder seems like a dream that's very far away, even when working as an IT professional.

My parents had four kids when they were my age with a combined income likely less than mine (inflation adjusted). I don't know how they did it.

Vastly cheaper rent and mortgages that were within reach (barely).

Edit+ The above fueled by 'a hack' on the normal state of things; the outward growth of cities and freeways to previously rural land to create the suburbs we know today.

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

#217

Post by beefman »

eppsilon wrote: post #183
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…

The US' national debt was 89% of GDP in 1950. Now it is 104%. [1] I somewhat agree with you (there was a long period in between when the debt-GDP % was much lower), but the current situation isn't as dire as you suggest. 1. https://www.thebalance.com/national-debt-by-year-compared-to...

To a first approximation, only foreign-held debt matters

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/HBFIGDQ188S

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Composition_of_U.S._Long-...

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

#218

Post by dragonwriter »

Ericson2314 wrote: post #46
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?

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…

> Generations are a bullshit idea from the marketing/advertisement cesspool to give themselves makework

No that's not where they originated from.

> The idea that demographic trends are descrete or have some sort of constant period is ludicrous

Named generations don't have a constant period. (They tend to run between about 12 and 25 years.)

> I should point out that the "boomers" are real insofar that birthrates did rise and fall.

True.

> There's no "boomlet" caused by them.

Without attributing what caused it, there was a continuous nearly monotonic decline in US birthrates from the peak of the Baby Boom in 1954 through 1976 (Gen X is usually tagged as ending between 76 and 80, then a run up to a peak in 1990, followed by a drop back to the 1976 low in 1995, hovering around that point or slightly under through the end of the millennium, where it started dropping again.

The Millennial/Gen Y group does correspond to a boomlet.

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

#219

Post by pcdoodle »

huehehue wrote: post #77
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…

They only need enough of an analysis to get a catchy article heading. Every day it's either "millennials are rich" or "millennials are poor". Millennials are poor: ~10% have $15k saved up https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/09/a-growing-percentage-of-mill... Millennials are rich: ~47% have $15k saved up https://www.sfgate.com/personal-finance/article/Millennials-... Avoid articles that stereotype any generation, because the…

Thank you. The narrative is wack and stats are cherry picked for headlines.
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