Millennials and Gen Z Increasingly Pessimistic About Their Lives, Survey Finds • Hacker News Board

Re: Millennials and Gen Z Increasingly Pessimistic About Their Lives, Survey Finds

#261

Post by eli_gottlieb » Mon, May 20, 2019, 8:43 PM UTC

oldjokes wrote: post #194

ranie93 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not the OP, and they may be overstating statistics (happy to be shown otherwise). At the same time, wage stagnation is no myth: "From 1973 to 2013, hourly compensation of a typical (production/nonsupervisory) worker rose just 9 percent while productivity increased 74 percent. This breakdown of pay growth has been especially evident in the last decade, affecting both college- and non-college-educated workers as we…

The really weird thing about wage stagnation is that there are millions of jobs going unfilled, companies are so desperate for people that they can't find anyone and are just dumping cash into stock buybacks instead of raising wages. Something is fundamentally broken in the labor market, it is not responding to supply & demand forces as it has in the past. I am not sure what terminology to use to describe what's goin…

Well, that could be because they're giving even the sandwich-making staff at fast-food joints noncompete agreements that stop them from switching to a better-paying employer, and union busting remains at historic levels.

Re: Millennials and Gen Z Increasingly Pessimistic About Their Lives, Survey Finds

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Post by asdff » Mon, May 20, 2019, 8:43 PM UTC

ryanmcbride wrote: post #219

mlcrypto wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's exactly how it was intended. This is a democratic republic. Both sides knew the rules of the 2016 election. Hillary knew the goal was the electoral college but she failed to campaign in the battleground mid west states. This is like complaining that the soccer team with the most possession or shots on target still lost the game.

Just because it's "the rules" doesn't mean its something people have to just sit down and accept. Every constitutional amendment has redefined "the rules", and drawing a bunch of lines on a map and ignoring a vote delta of 3 million people is in my opinion, a rule that is directly counter to a democracy, and should be criticized and amended.

Especially when the maps were drawn centuries ago and haven't been updated since. A person in Wyoming's vote is 4x more powerful than someone in California based on how many electoral votes that state gets.

Re: Millennials and Gen Z Increasingly Pessimistic About Their Lives, Survey Finds

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Post by Bjartr » Mon, May 20, 2019, 8:43 PM UTC

internet_user wrote: post #60

danielecook wrote: post #53

Started chatting with a guy at the airport about work / careers. Within 5 minutes he started ripping on millennials and their work ethic. I am a millennial! Sucks to be saddled with debt after college, have lower paying jobs, and still be shit on by the older generations. And I have things relatively good.

I am also a millennial. The work ethic problem seems to actually exist (from my limited but numerous experiences, including my own), however I am convinced that it is due to learned helplessness. Just imagine hearing your entire life that the world is just about to end any minute now, the icebergs are melting, everything is polluted, everything is so very bad, financial depression, no jobs for you, etc etc. Seems lik…

> The work ethic problem seems to actually exist (from my limited but numerous experiences, including my own)

That's meaningless without being able to compare to previous generations when they were the same age.

Re: Millennials and Gen Z Increasingly Pessimistic About Their Lives, Survey Finds

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Post by notabee » Mon, May 20, 2019, 8:45 PM UTC

john_moscow wrote: post #49

makerofspoons wrote: post #30

"Climate change, protecting the environment and natural disasters topped the list of most respondents on a personal level, but less than three in ten of both the Millennial and Gen Z cohorts cited it as a worry." This is surprising. As a Gen Z-er this highlights the kind of bubble I find myself in- my friend group is almost universally in a state of despair about the collapsing biosphere. Climate change and mass exti…

Are you sure? Does the climate change affect your personal life more than inability to afford reasonable real estate or kid-related expenses off most today's salaries?

The severe consequences of business as usual emissions with no mitigation will easily be felt within the lifespan of even the oldest Millennials and probably a great deal of Gen X. Gen Z and Millennials' children are looking at inheriting a hellscape of famine, unprecedented extreme weather, and forced migrations to escape unlivable crumbling infrastructure that has never been maintained to standards from decades ago, let alone to a level that will withstand the new conditions. Here's just one example of a single point of failure that could cause a global economic shock. There are certainly many more such shocks on the way: https://www.wunderground.com/cat6/If-Old-River-Control-Struc...

Re: Millennials and Gen Z Increasingly Pessimistic About Their Lives, Survey Finds

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Post by tathougies » Mon, May 20, 2019, 8:45 PM UTC

api wrote: post #120

rukittenme wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not accounting for the higher interest rates of the 1980s. Which home would you prefer to buy: $150,000 at 15% over 30 years. $350,000 at 4% over 30 years. Hint : they both have approximately the same total loan cost and payment. You can do this calculation with your parents. My home cost $350k at 3.8%. My parents bought my childhood home for $88k at 8%. Adjust my parents' home price for inflation and run the…

Down payments are the monkey wrench here. The requirement to have a down payment means high prices basically lock people out of homeownership, period. That in turn limits ability to build wealth at all, even at a crappy interest rate.

Having a mortgage is not a form of wealth.

Re: Millennials and Gen Z Increasingly Pessimistic About Their Lives, Survey Finds

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Post by tathougies » Mon, May 20, 2019, 8:48 PM UTC

asdff wrote: post #257

9HZZRfNlpR wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People's homes were much less luxurious, as their lifestyle. A lot of the things we take for granted the people at the time they only dreamed about.

It's the same housing stock for the most part as the 1980s. There are teensy tiny bungalos that leak water built well before the 1980s in Los Angeles right now that are asking for nearly a million dollars. In fact, you will have a hard time finding any home in LA that hasn't gone up in price given an arbitrary 10 year period, while wages have been stagnant for the most part. It's a recipe for disaster when shelter be…

> It's a recipe for disaster when shelter becomes an investment opportunity rather than a basic human need.

Why would this being an 'investment' interfere with its pricing anymore than if everyone had lived in these homes as shelter? You don't magically have the privilege of selling 'investments' for more than you bought it. Not trying to be facetious... just genuinely curious? If people are willing to pay that price, then that is the price it would have been, whether or not it was bought for investment or living, right?

Re: Millennials and Gen Z Increasingly Pessimistic About Their Lives, Survey Finds

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Post by Domenic_S » Mon, May 20, 2019, 8:48 PM UTC

algaeontoast wrote: post #255

Domenic_S wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, you're humblebragging about different things (Los Altos, Google), not sure the subject really matters

I was giving location as context for my perspective / statement...

I was (too subtly) making the point that perhaps it's the location and not kids-as-trophies per se. Possibly your experience in the 3rd richest zip code in the nation isn't generalizable to the rest of the world?

Re: Millennials and Gen Z Increasingly Pessimistic About Their Lives, Survey Finds

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Post by navigatesol » Mon, May 20, 2019, 8:48 PM UTC

psychometry wrote: post #150

jdoliner wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There have been 4 or 5 (one is a bit ambiguous) elections where the winner lost the popular vote. [0] So no, this isn't more than any other time in US history combined. But more importantly, who cares? They lost the popular vote in an election in which the popular vote didn't count for anything. If the popular vote had counted for something in these elections, you would have gotten a different result. The candidates…

This might be the dumbest, most unnecessarily pedantic comment I've ever read on HN.

Why? The candidates optimize to win the electoral college, not the popular vote. You have no idea what the results would have been if the goal was to win the popular vote.

Re: Millennials and Gen Z Increasingly Pessimistic About Their Lives, Survey Finds

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Post by weaksauce » Mon, May 20, 2019, 8:50 PM UTC

rdiddly wrote: post #249

Domenic_S wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the world wasn't ending. We grew up in the 90s and early noughts, when ya, there were problems, but they all seemed containable Here are some things I remember from that time off the top of my head: We were on the brink of environmental collapse as CFCs were destroying the ozone layer Acid rain was going to destroy lakes, trees, rivers, eventually killing us all HIV was not well understood and very very scary Waco/…

And the world was going to end at the stroke of midnight Jan 1 2000. There was a real and palpable undercurrent of apocalyptism in the zeitgeist.

I remember talking to my fundamentalist Christian friend in high school who literally said his last goodbyes to his friends. The next time I saw him was awkward.

Re: Millennials and Gen Z Increasingly Pessimistic About Their Lives, Survey Finds

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Post by taberiand » Mon, May 20, 2019, 8:50 PM UTC

Domenic_S wrote: post #225

icegreentea2 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a millennial, at least one thing that is different is that we all grew up in that brief period when the world wasn't ending. We grew up in the 90s and early noughts, when ya, there were problems, but they all seemed containable. It seemed like the adults generally knew what they were doing, and could be counted on the to the right thing. I'd also argue (with no real basis of course) that the type of dread that cli…

> the world wasn't ending. We grew up in the 90s and early noughts, when ya, there were problems, but they all seemed containable Here are some things I remember from that time off the top of my head: We were on the brink of environmental collapse as CFCs were destroying the ozone layer Acid rain was going to destroy lakes, trees, rivers, eventually killing us all HIV was not well understood and very very scary Waco/…

All of this pales in comparison to the coming devastation of climate change and the global pollution crisis, which actually should be included in that 90's list as well - and the 80's, and 70's...