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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

#251

Post by asdff »

pacala wrote: post #95
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 a lot of fun to be in your '50s, have your body start to fall apart and be a few paychecks away from being thrown into the streets. But hey, you could afford having a few beers with your friends in your '20s. Or even take a holiday, you rich bastard.

People have retirement accounts. People aren't taking cash out of their 401k early to get drunk with their friends on Friday (I hope). People in their 20s and 30s just aren't seeing much of a need to set aside otherwise disposable or earmarked money to one day use it all on a down payment for something that you don't NEED to ever actually own.

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

#252

Post by asdff »

nkg wrote: post #60

But isn't the fact that they are just like their parents exactly the problem ? The GDP of the United States has more than doubled since the 80's, so how is it that millenials are as "poor" as their parents ?

People aren't paid according to the GDP of the United States.

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

#253

Post by asdff »

dragonwriter wrote: post #250
asdff wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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—r…

I guess it comes down to what considerations you value more. Personally, I'd still take the instability because I value the flexibility much more at this point in my life.

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

#254

Post by asdff »

beaconstudios wrote: post #59
enraged_camel wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe, but it's worth noting that college is tremendously more expensive today than it was back when Boomers were attending it. We're talking an order of magnitude or more. edit: not multiple orders of magnitude

also, more people are attending college. College didn't used to be something everyone went to. With the proliferation of student loans, universities have no reason to keep fees down.

Living wage jobs are much harder to secure without a college degree, full stop. I read a headline today that in the Inland Empire, 50% of jobs do not pay a living wage.

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

#255

Post by dragonwriter »

jandrese wrote: post #88
lkitching wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The term 'Xennial' was coined just for people in your demographic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xennials

For some reason the Gen Y label never stuck. It was the thing back in the 90s and early 2000s, but then just faded away for no reason in particular.

Because Millennial was catchier; Gen Y only made any kind of sense in relation to Gen X, not independently.

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

#256

Post by asdff »

maxxxxx wrote: post #107

I think the big problem is that there are less stable paths now. Previous generations had a clear path to getting a house, affordable education and stable retirement whereas now you have to take on a lot of debt, gamble in the stock market and have to have some level of luck to retire safely. Any major health expense or company layoff may destroy your well laid-out plans and put you back to zero. I think today's life…

People are much more specialized in their professions now as well. I might be able to find a relevant job in every city, but in some cities that might be the only employer, and there is no incentive for loyalty toward your employer, and you make much more leveraging your existing salary for a better job at another company than waiting for a raise or title change at your present one. You are so much better off living in a place where you can easily get a new job under a different employer in your field without having to find a new apartment and plan a relocation as well, not to mention being in a larger network and the innumerable opportunities that gives you.

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

#257

Post by asdff »

goto11 wrote: post #245
throw_away2 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Very true, but the life of a post war baby was very different than someone who grew up during the great depression, or during the roaring 20s, or any other time. It is useful to bin people into groups facing similar environmental and temporal situations, it makes comparisons and tracking a given bin of people through time easier.

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

#258

Post by dragonwriter »

gaius wrote: post #122
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…

eat out, order takeaway, take holidays, go to bars, buy things for hobbies, buy clothes Right. When I was a student in the mid-90s students were poor. We wore second-hand clothes because they were cheap, not because they were “vintage fashion” (which costs as much or more than new!), we re-used teabags instead of Starbucks every day, we went to the market at closing time to buy for pennies the produce the stallholder…

> When I was a student in the mid-90s students were poor. We wore second-hand clothes because they were cheap, not because they were “vintage fashion” (which costs as much or more than new!), we re-used teabags instead of Starbucks every day, we went to the market at closing time to buy for pennies the produce the stallholders were about to throw away instead of takeaways and eating out, we drank crap beer at the union instead of going to clubs, we used PCs in the library rather than having our own laptops...

Virtually none of the students I knew when I was one I the 1990s did most of those things, more of the people I've known as students recently do them. (Yeah, we didn't have Starbucks per session, but we did have the overpriced trendy on-campus coffee stand with similar choices and, adjusted for inflation, higher prices then Starbucks has today, and it was busy constantly.)

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

#259

Post by asdff »

roymurdock wrote: post #51
sdegutis wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generations has been a concept long before marketing. I do wonder about who draws the line for where a generation begins/ends, but the concept is pretty clear: you are one generation, your children another, your parents another, your grandparents another. Hence the base word "generate".

Market research agencies draw the line nowadays and their terms get picked up in general lingo Philosophers, novelists, sociologists, anthropologists, and economists used to define, study, and critique generational divides before advertising became such a pervasive part of the modern economy

>Philosophers, novelists, sociologists, anthropologists, and economists used to define, study, and critique generational divides before advertising became such a pervasive part of the modern economy

And they still do...

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

#260

Post by dragonwriter »

asdff wrote: post #253
dragonwriter wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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—r…

I guess it comes down to what considerations you value more. Personally, I'd still take the instability because I value the flexibility much more at this point in my life.

Sure, people have different priorities; I'm just saying that the idea that the only reason one might prefer ownership is investment value is missing a lot.
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