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Fed Says Millennials Are Just Like Their Parents, Only Poorer

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

#71
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 large scale of deaths and later births that came from WWII affected age demographics in western countries enough that we have identifable "waves" in age groups and thus generations.

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

#72
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might be surprised. Ernest Hemingway, an avid drinker, coined the term "lime" so he could distinguish it from other types of citrus in the Daiquiri, one of his favorite drinks. He also popularized the term Lost Generation, generally regarded as the first generational cohort with a name, although the term was originally coined by Gertrude Stein. (Ohyyfuvg.)

I hope this tidbit is true.

[deleted]

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

#73
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?

I mean, not denying that these labels are most popular in their English form, but people do write about millennials in other languages.

Most seem to call them Generation Y

https://yandex.ru/yandsearch?text=Поколение%20Y

The common Chinese translations seem to treat it as an "era" more than a "generation", it's talked about reasonably frequently in ROC pop media it seems.

https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y%E4%B8%96%E4%BB%A3

Of course, at the end of the day it's just arbitrary BS, but it's not like the English speaking world is the only place people dare to split time into discrete chunks. And people generally know what you're talking about when you say "millennial", even if they couldn't tell you the "official" start and end years. I may be too young to be a millennial, by one year, according to some of those definitions.

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

#74
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?

"Am I missing something?"

Not really. People like to categorize things in attempt to draw any kind of conclusions from it. Sometimes it can be helpful and sometimes not.

The trends they are describing were most likely occurring consistently over time and not at any particular point, but if you take two points in time 30 years apart and compare them it might look like a drastic change.

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

#75
post #34
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?

No it does not make sense, but I think what you may be missing is that it is not supposed to make logical sense as a concept, it's supposed to appeal to other parts of a person's psyche such as pride and belonging. So this contradiction and confusion that you observe is completely accurate, but that doesn't deteriorate the effectiveness of "generational thinking" at what it does. I think it's just a part of a bigger…

>It's good to know (I wasn't aware before) that this trend isn't present in all groups of humans, it gives me hope that it is able to be overcome collectively.

Did you just place yourself in the group of persons above such baseless group-defining behavior?

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

#76
post #24
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?

I was born in 1980, which means I don't fit neatly into either 'Gen X' or 'Millennial.' I grew up with computers, but I'm able to walk down the street and watch where I'm going rather than stare at my smartphone whilst walking into other people, lampposts, cars, etc. But really, it's all arbitrary and pointless, I agree.

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

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

#77

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…

They only need enough of an analysis to get a catchy article heading. Every day it's either "millennials are rich" or "millennials are poor".

Millennials are poor: ~10% have $15k saved up https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/09/a-growing-percentage-of-mill...

Millennials are rich: ~47% have $15k saved up https://www.sfgate.com/personal-finance/article/Millennials-...

Avoid articles that stereotype any generation, because they're garbage that distort the truth to push agendas and generate clicks.

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

#78

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 have neither a work ethic nor a saving ethic. In the end, they'll spend their parents money and the US economy will flat-line.

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

#79
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?

I am from India and I practically grew up listening how unfortunate my elders were. Every time I complained of the cable TV not working, the standard reply was - “When I was of your age, I had to look out a window”.

Ergo, the generation thing is always there, just that it takes a different form in different countries.

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

#80
post #61

From the article: “What’s old is new again. The paper observes that some of the millennials’ parents were subject to similar baseless grumbles of "kids these days" from their elders.” I don’t know though. Seems like part of the nastiness of the times is the baby boomers constantly taking jabs at millennials. Perhaps the silent generation complained the boomers weren’t “frugal enough” but I have a hard time believing…

Baby boomers were teenagers and young adults from the late 50s through the 80s. So the birth of rock-n-roll, the protest movements of the 60s and 70s, emergence of drug culture, the sexual revolution, disco, the crack epidemic, and the birth of rap. As a Gen X'er I can personally remember the mid-70s to the late 80s and the hate spewed out at baby boomers by previous generations. I don't think the Millennials have it…

Now it's our job to bring peace and prosperity to the next ones.
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