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Gen Z have 86% less purchasing power compared to baby boomers in their twenties
41–50 of 314 posts
Re: Gen Z have 86% less purchasing power compared to baby boomers in their twenties
#42Isn't it a natural consequence of capital growing faster than wage?
> a natural consequence of capital growing faster than wage? No. It’s the result of our real estate and housing system. (Stocks and Bitcoin can go up faster than wages without spiking CoL.)
It's a result of skyrocketing corporate profit margins and plunging corporate tax share leading to a massive consolidation of wealth among a very, very small number of people.
Re: Gen Z have 86% less purchasing power compared to baby boomers in their twenties
#43Well, I spent my twenties (in the 80's) in school, or working for 30K or 36K/year. You can work out what inflation does to those salaries vs. what purchasing power gets you today. Anecdotal, yeah, but it's all I got. And albums cost $4-5 in the mid-70's and I did ok on $20/week for food and stuff in school. And there was no internet and the only computers filled rooms (but were still fun). One did social interactions…
> Well, I spent my twenties (in the 80's) in school, or working for 30K or 36K/year. Ballpark the 80's as 1985 and that works out to 82,604.83 to 99,125.80, for the curious. What most people would consider an excellent salary in their 20s, probably (software engineers in the current market excepted, perhaps).
There's always a golden job in the era.
Back in the 2000s in Canada, you could make 350k/y driving a truck in the oil fields with 0 education.
Software engineers are just the new golden job of this era. Even then, it's still considerably harder and has a higher bar of entry than driving a truck.
Re: Gen Z have 86% less purchasing power compared to baby boomers in their twenties
#44At least they can buy cheap TVs, right? I wonder if we can finally accept that just because things like phones and TVs got better faster than purchasing power got worse, doesn't mean that it hasn't been getting worse for a while. I'd even go so far to say that technical progress in a couple areas has hidden some pretty stark declines. Or at least allowed some people to point at shiny things getting better when compla…
What good is cheaper tech if we just use that to add more features and keep the same price? You could get a TV for less than $50 if it had the same features and processing power as it did in 2002. Same for computers. Imagine how cheap we could make a car that only has the features we had in the 90’s? Even if you include the mandatory passive safety upgrades.
I'd be first in line for a new car that only has the features of cars from the 1990s.
Re: Gen Z have 86% less purchasing power compared to baby boomers in their twenties
#45The proliferation of payment plans. Everyone can "afford" a flagship smartphone. Only 36$ per month Everyone can afford a car only : 340$ a month. numbers add up fast digging themselves into a hole
>Everyone can "afford" a flagship smartphone. Only 36$ per month Everyone can afford a car only : 340$ a month.
But auto loans were around since the 20s. What changed?
Re: Gen Z have 86% less purchasing power compared to baby boomers in their twenties
#46To be fair, most (the vast majority) of people I know in gen z I know works significantly less hard than my parents did, I did, etc. Those who do work hard are fairly well off. They work two jobs, didn’t go to college, but own their homes and have a steady income. There’s definitely systemic issues, but work ethic is the major issue. And that’s a cultural issue. Would you want the gen z you know building your house?…
I know gen Z as working harder, especially in school. The bar gets higher every year.
Re: Gen Z have 86% less purchasing power compared to baby boomers in their twenties
#47To be fair, most (the vast majority) of people I know in gen z I know works significantly less hard than my parents did, I did, etc. Those who do work hard are fairly well off. They work two jobs, didn’t go to college, but own their homes and have a steady income. There’s definitely systemic issues, but work ethic is the major issue. And that’s a cultural issue. Would you want the gen z you know building your house?…
I'd attribute it more to the fact that zoomers are mostly just finishing high school or in uni right now. While boomers mostly left school early to jump directly in to a job. Give it 10 years and see if the education pays off.
Re: Gen Z have 86% less purchasing power compared to baby boomers in their twenties
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unsubstantiated guess: insane P/E ratios became the norm and maintaining them is harder when you’re raising salaries.
How do large P/E ratios impact salaries?
I don't think this would pass much scrutiny, but I suppose you could have a situation where a small number of people that own a large number of shares in a variety of companies could become a monopolistic unified force that could put downward wage pressures on entire industries.
Re: Gen Z have 86% less purchasing power compared to baby boomers in their twenties
#49It seems the annual income vs. CPI is the core chart here. Something happened in the decade of 2000-2010 to throw things out of whack. I'm not informed enough to know if that was the result of policy decisions or what, but I'd like to know how wage growth declined so dramatically during this time while prices seemed to maintain its projected linear growth.
Midpoint of a 20 year war. Inflation, combined with the financial engineering of the 90s and the deflationary power of the internet.
My parents bought a house when I was born in NYC in the 70s for $20k, sold it for 10x more in 1990 and that buyer sold it for 10x more circa 2007.
The deflationary power of the internet powered costs for business. My employer has 1/3 the accountants they had 30 years ago, but 5x as many IT people. Specific occupations make more money, but most make less due to dropped demand. On the production side, you can pretty trivially source goods from a anywhere on the planet. Again, reducing cost.
But the hard assets go up. Housing, food, durable goods. The average white good like a fridge costs 50% more and last 50% less time.
Re: Gen Z have 86% less purchasing power compared to baby boomers in their twenties
#50I don't understand why people compare now to before (Boomer adolescence) in the United States. The USA basically had no competition when Boomers were in their 20s. All of the major powers destroyed themselves and their economy.
I'd be interested to see this analysis done per country.