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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

#241

Post by nkkollaw »

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?

Assuming you're in Europe, we go by decades. Ex., we say "in the 60s", "in the 90s", etc.

In the States they use "baby boomers", "generation x", "millennials" more, but it's the same thing.

It's all based on the postwar period (WWII, generally).

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

#242

Post by dolzenko »

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?

E.g. regime change in Russia, there is no "line" but people born in Soviet Union are very different from the ones born in modern day Russia

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

#243

Post by nativespecies »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #57
acconrad wrote: post #18

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?

Everyone is trying to give their children a better life, not everyone else's children a better life.

Yes, many boomers in my family always moan "Why do I have to pay for someone else's kid to go to college? Why do I have to pay for someone else to get health insurance?"

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

#244

Post by nativespecies »

philodough wrote: post #78
LiterallyDoge wrote: post #4

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

Boomers made the economy grow incredibly and had some busts along the way. They got up and kept going. The boomers are the most creative and productive American generation period. Millenials are still living with their (wealthy) boomer parents, delaying marriage and waiting for their boomer parents to die, whereupon the millenials will inherit their boomer parents' wealth. Unfortunately this will fail, b/c millenials…

Gonna need a citation on that one there, philo

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

#245

Post by goto11 »

throw_away2 wrote: post #47
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?

The whole thing was invented by two boomers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss%E2%80%93Howe_generatio... My personal theory is that it is just an artifact of US boomer navel-gazing and self-exceptionalism. Also that it fits in nicely with peoples' tendency to want to drop other people into little buckets so that they don't have to think about them too hard. People do the same thing with race, believing these diff…

The post-war baby boom was not something exceptional to the US. There were baby booms in most of the western world.

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

#246

Post by claudiawerner »

curo wrote: post #207
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…

The world runs in cycles. You start to see various shifts when you zoom out historically. Conservative / liberal oscillations for instance: The Age of Enlightenment prized composure and disparaged human emotion. The Romantics countered, to hell with composure! As William Blake wrote, "those who restrain desire do so because there's is weak enough to restrain." A life of love needed no guiding hand. Lord Byron wrote,…

Although I don't quite agree with the content of your analysis, the fact of this kind of analysis itself is wonderfully Hegelian.

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

#247

Post by asdff »

aglavine wrote: post #70
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…

I think that they eat out and order takeaway because they perceive that they never going to save enough money to afford a house.

There really is no pressing need to ever own a house. What do I get with ownership over renting? Sure, the mortgage payments might be cheaper than a given rent, and perhaps the local housing market might work in my favor, but perhaps it won't!

I might one day own a house, but that's not going to happen for at least a decade or more until my position rises from entry level to middle to a high-enough level where I actually have the liquid capital for a down payment on something worth dealing with a long term mortgage for, and have enough money set aside to deal with potential catastrophic repair or even just regular maintenance. Right now, if I come home and my roof is caved in, the floor is flooded, or my PSU explodes away half the house, I'm gonna shrug and call my landlord and renters insurance agency, and let them solve all these catastrophic problems on their time and their dime/

I'm in no hurry to get one, so I don't see a point to save specifically for a house at the expense of efficiency (spending 15 minutes to order and eat a meal vs. 1hr+ cooking one), or other more fruitful investment opportunities than home ownership. Not to mention, it would make moving around for better employment much more involved and stressful if I had a house I needed to sell or rent out in order to leave the city.

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

#248

Post by asdff »

Sargos wrote: post #97
aglavine wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that they eat out and order takeaway because they perceive that they never going to save enough money to afford a house.

It's a self fulfilling prophecy.

You aren't going to make much of dent into a housing savings forgoing occasional $8 carry out and the cheapest beers at the bar in your 20s.

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

#249

Post by asdff »

beaconstudios wrote: post #55
acconrad wrote: post #18

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?

I think it's largely related to the housing bubble. House prices have risen sharply in the last few decades and more people buy houses as investment.

Why would you not buy a house as an investment? If you aren't looking to get a return you might as well rent and have your hands away from the duties and risks of property ownership.

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

#250

Post by dragonwriter »

asdff wrote: post #249
beaconstudios wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's largely related to the housing bubble. House prices have risen sharply in the last few decades and more people buy houses as investment.

Why would you not buy a house as an investment? If you aren't looking to get a return you might as well rent and have your hands away from the duties and risks of property ownership.

> If you aren't looking to get a return you might as well rent and have your hands away from the duties and risks of property ownership.

A couple moves forced by landlords deciding to move in or sell the property to people looking to remodel and flip and you might discover non-investment value to owning your residence.

(Renting comes with those and many other risks; essentially all the duties of ownership are risks—risk that the landlord will fail the duty—for renters. Unless the lease terms transferred to the duty to the renter, then they are just duties.)

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