How can they earn more when all the money is at the hands of Trump and others who make up 1%? The current capitalism is not distributing the wealth very well and it's certainly nearing a disaster. I wish the left had an answer but they don't. They're stuck with political correctness and more extreme are can't see that they don't have an answer to capitalism and that everything they've tried in the past has failed, and working class have found a billionaire to be their champion and think that migrants and non-white and non-Christian people are to blame for their suffering. And nobody is willing to attack the current system and inequality it's created. Especially in US.
Barely Half of 30-Year-Olds in the U.S. Earn More Than Their Parents Did at 30
321–330 of 394 posts
Re: Barely Half of 30-Year-Olds in the U.S. Earn More Than Their Parents Did at 30
#322How can they earn more when all the money is at the hands of Trump and others who make up 1%? The current capitalism is not distributing the wealth very well and it's certainly nearing a disaster. I wish the left had an answer but they don't. They're stuck with political correctness and more extreme are can't see that they don't have an answer to capitalism and that everything they've tried in the past has failed, an…
Everything you wrote is so true!
Re: Barely Half of 30-Year-Olds in the U.S. Earn More Than Their Parents Did at 30
#323Compound that with the percentage of income 30 year olds spend on housing, education, health care and child care compared to their parents and we have a recipe for disaster.
The sense of entitlement is a lot higher these days. I grew up in a 900 sqft house with 1 bathroom. Yet all my peers (myself included) seek out homes 2x, 3x or bigger. Same with cars.... my parents bought used, reliable cars. Today we want fancy things. Growing up we had cable tv and a phone line. Probably spent $50/month total. The family cellphone bill, home broadband, various tv services easily top out over $300/m…
> Earnings aside, current generations are spending way more because they want more.
That's certainly true, but nowadays the incentives which nudge you to consumption are also much more intense, subtle and clever. We are tricked into things we do not need.
The ONLY escape is not clever consumption but no/reduced consumption, or actually more precise, any consumption which does not involve money to be transferred.
Re: Barely Half of 30-Year-Olds in the U.S. Earn More Than Their Parents Did at 30
#324Earlier quoted context omitted.
Likewise. I'm now just very confused. What is going to be the next censored topic of the week?
'dang has made clear that changing community rules is not going to be a common thing. There's a lot of insightful discussion from him and other members that will probably answer a lot of questions you may have in the same thread I posted above, and the link provided there: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13131251
Can you please post this on the front page - it's in the collective interest that that gets broad readership, otherwise confusion will reign, particularly if you're pruning threads which ask about it!
For instance, could have saved me several posts.
Re: Barely Half of 30-Year-Olds in the U.S. Earn More Than Their Parents Did at 30
#325Earlier quoted context omitted.
'dang has made clear that changing community rules is not going to be a common thing. There's a lot of insightful discussion from him and other members that will probably answer a lot of questions you may have in the same thread I posted above, and the link provided there: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13131251
Can you please post this on the front page - it's in the collective interest that that gets broad readership, otherwise confusion will reign, particularly if you're pruning threads which ask about it! For instance, could have saved me several posts.
Good idea. I can't post it or pin it to the front page, but I created a submission with a link to the thread:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13137864
I can't comment on the submission to give it any context, so if you want to add some, please do.
'dang: if this was inappropriate, please let me know and take it down.
Re: Barely Half of 30-Year-Olds in the U.S. Earn More Than Their Parents Did at 30
#326Compound that with the percentage of income 30 year olds spend on housing, education, health care and child care compared to their parents and we have a recipe for disaster.
The increase of housing costs is also a result of double incomes. So while housing is more expensive than a generation ago, at least we have double incomes now. But of course, this increases costs for child care, as nobody is home to watch the kids.
Re: Barely Half of 30-Year-Olds in the U.S. Earn More Than Their Parents Did at 30
#327Earlier quoted context omitted.
Price per square foot for housing has remained remarkably constant over time. People are spending more on houses than they used to because they are buying bigger houses.
Anecdotally, this is not the case, even in more rural areas. My parents bought 5 acres and built a house for $100,000 (adjusted for inflation). I recently bought a house with half the square footage and 1/10th of the land for double the amount. And I got a great deal in the current market by being willing to live even further from town.
Yep. Moved to high cost of living city almost a decade ago. Always lived frugally, even though I'm now making decent money. The plan was to get the hell out of this overpriced, over crowded area with a stash of cash and head back to Midwest to pick up a nice home.
It's terrifying watching Zillow on a few Midwestern cities that had avoided the bubbles so far. It seems as if the coastal cash and / or Chinese money has now trickled its way inward. 25% price increases in 2 years for some of the newer condos I'm interested in.
I don't want to move just yet cause I like my job and wouldn't be able to find something similar in a smaller city, but now I fear I'll be priced out again. This sucks.
Re: Barely Half of 30-Year-Olds in the U.S. Earn More Than Their Parents Did at 30
#328Well. I guess the "No Politics week" wasn't going to last. This goes to the core of socialized healthcare, Social Security, Universal Basic Income, and the dismantling ofsaid systems that exist. The Baby boomers pulled the ladder up when they climbed up, and left us all in the lurch paying for them. You know, "Get the government outta my life, but dont you dare touch my medicare".
I'm sure it's got nothing to do with the fact that rich people now pay a lot less effective taxes than in our parents youth and that income inequality is at an all time high... no, of course not, the problem was that our parents "pulled the ladder while going up". Shrug.
Re: Barely Half of 30-Year-Olds in the U.S. Earn More Than Their Parents Did at 30
#329Earlier quoted context omitted.
The sense of entitlement is a lot higher these days. I grew up in a 900 sqft house with 1 bathroom. Yet all my peers (myself included) seek out homes 2x, 3x or bigger. Same with cars.... my parents bought used, reliable cars. Today we want fancy things. Growing up we had cable tv and a phone line. Probably spent $50/month total. The family cellphone bill, home broadband, various tv services easily top out over $300/m…
This. US home ownership has gone up and down between 64% and 69% in the past 30 years, currently at the low end of that. But at the same time, the average new house went from 1,600 to 2,500 sqft. Thirty years ago, how many people plopped down $5k for a TV? $700 for a phone? $150/month for telecom? Life expediency has increased by 6 years from 1975 to 2010. And to top it off, we're working less than we ever have. Aver…
The average new house is targeted at a small minority of relatively wealthy people, because they're the most profitable market. It's not going to be terribly representative of what normal people want. (Even here in the UK, where new house sizes are effectively capped now, they still cost more than a larger older house because house builders want to make money..)
Re: Barely Half of 30-Year-Olds in the U.S. Earn More Than Their Parents Did at 30
#330Earlier quoted context omitted.
> In my opinion, massive automation of tasks is going to cause a massive demand of programmers, developers and QA engineers, so no robot apocalypse yet. The question is not how massive it is in absolute numbers, but how does it compare to the amount of jobs that are replaced by automation? And you know the answer to that question. If all jobs so replaced would create an equivalent number of "programmers, developers a…
That's actually not true. The effect would be an increase in productivity. More things get built/done with the same resources.
The only resource conserved in this case is the amount of time spent to produce some good - it's not like robots can magically make more out of the same chunk of steel, say.
But if you need the same amount of people to produce the same quantity of product (jut in different roles), then, by definition, your automation does not conserve time.
On the other hand, if your automation does decrease amount of time spent per unit of output, and you run it at full capacity, then where do all the extra units go? If you say "other people", then that would imply that there was some heretofore unsatisfied demand that the market couldn't satisfy due to a labor shortage.
Automation is a great way to solve the labor shortage problem, but it's not always present. And when it's not present, you're just adding more goods without adding new workers (or increasing wages for existing workers) to afford those goods - so you'll end up with an overproduction crisis.
Note, this is not an automation issue. This is a capitalism issue, because in capitalism, the only demand that matters is the one that lets you make a profit. People who may need what you make, but cannot pay above cost of production for it, don't matter. Automation tends to increase the size of that category.