Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Fed Says Millennials Are Just Like Their Parents, Only Poorer

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 284 posts

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

#81

Post by Vraxx »

esotericn wrote: post #39
enraged_camel wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you are talking about is having higher quality of life, despite having lower wealth. But that's a separate subject in my opinion.

"Quality of life" is a problematic term in that context. Within bounds it's possible to compare. Two families living on the same street, one has $10k higher income than the other, the higher income family has (at least the potential for) a higher QoL. But comparing someone with a high income in a downtown flatshare who has an ~infinite entertainment budget to someone who is well on the way to owning a home outright i…

I'll start by saying that I agree with your assessment of the underlying issue here, I just have a slight nitpick with your comparison.

Other areas do exist that could allow people to move out of the city to a cheaper owned home in the suburbs. Personally I don't think that's a good solution though because suburbs are pretty inefficient and seem likely to exacerbate the climate problem we're running full speed into. I just wanted to point out that you can form some comparison because they are both still relatively attainable. (I might be mistaken on the real estate landscape in the UK since I'm from the US, if so just disregard this comment)

My other comment is mostly aimed at GP, but it seems that it has persisted down the comment chain, which is that from everything I've heard and read, "Higher income, lower wealth" is not an accurate assessment of what is happening when you factor in inflation. It's more of "The same/lower income, lower wealth" on average. Even still though, given the ideals of a capitalist system saying that owning capital is literally worth capital itself, lower long term wealth is most definitely a long term problem because this is a runaway feedback loop of capital concentrating in the top and the lower non capital owning members of society are slaves to capital. You might be technically earning a wage and thus not fit the technical definition of slavery, but if you have less and less freedom (defined as less freedom through lack of actual choice) because of it, I see very little difference.

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

#82

Post by jdlyga »

iagooar wrote: 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?

It's kind of like separating the 19th century from the 20th century at WW1. Millenials are separated from Gen X by having computers and the internet introduced at some point while they were growing up. Whereas Gen Z are the kids who have had iPads since they were babies.

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

#83

Post by js8 »

iagooar wrote: 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?

In Czech Republic, this "generation of something" is also sometimes used, because of two reasons:

First, there were actual population boom waves - one peaked after WW2, another peaked in the late 70s, another roughly after 2000. Also there was birth rate decline as an after shock from the transformation to the market economy. These waves seem to get generated by strong historical events or inadequate access to housing. In general, thanks to immigration and larger differences in the age of motherhood, these waves slowly disperse.

Second, because there was a lot of politically different historical periods in Czech Republic in the past 100 years, people born around the same time tend to have quite different experiences. So you have generation which was born in democratic Czechoslovakia after WW1, generation that grew up under Nazism, generation that grew during Communist purges in the 50s, generation that grew during a period of cultural renaissance in the 60s, generation that grew during a period of political tightening (normalization) in the 70s and 80s and generations born after the democratic revolution of 1989.

These different generations were largely learning a different language (German, Russian, English) and each was under influence of quite different culture than others.

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

#84

Post by dreamdu5t »

enraged_camel wrote: post #22

It's good to see a study that quantifies what we have suspected for a while now: millennials aren't doing as well as their parents were at any given age. This is why certain "life thresholds" such as getting married or buying a house are delayed, sometimes significantly. The annoying thing is that this is typically blamed on imaginary negative traits that millennials possess, such as laziness or spite borne out of fe…

> who now have to live with, and pay, their debt.

No you don’t. You don’t have to pay your parents debts. Not sure what “debt” you are referring to?

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

#85

Post by maxxxxx »

iagooar wrote: 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?

It's a very American thing. They like to categorize people and then assign attributes to that group. "Conservative", "Liberal", "Gen X", ""Millenial", "Baby Boomers" and so on. I also find it pretty unhelpful to think about society that way. I think Clinton for example thought that "women" would vote for her because they are "women" and all "women" have the same opinions.

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

#86

Post by gcb0 »

aglavine wrote: post #70
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…

I think that they eat out and order takeaway because they perceive that they never going to save enough money to afford a house.

and have less time to cook at home and need both parents working full time instead of one. etc.

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

#87

Post by tssva »

sdegutis wrote: post #11
burlesona wrote: post #2

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…

There was an article the other day that said divorce rates for millennials is down a notable amount from baby boomers, but without the marriage rate lowering. One way of interpreting this is that baby boomers have more selfish tendencies than other generations, and millennials are realizing that their parents' ways (including divorce) are selfish, and learning from their parents mistakes. If this is true, then it's p…

Divorce rates also decline when the economy declines. When the economy is booming people feel more confident in their potential future economic security post divorce and are more willing to roll the divorce dice.

I would guess that has more to do with the rates than any moral superiority between generations.

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

#88

Post by jandrese »

lkitching wrote: post #76
jcadam wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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.

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

#89

Post by gbear605 »

jdlyga wrote: post #82
iagooar wrote: 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?

It's kind of like separating the 19th century from the 20th century at WW1. Millenials are separated from Gen X by having computers and the internet introduced at some point while they were growing up. Whereas Gen Z are the kids who have had iPads since they were babies.

Gen Z starts around 1998 or so, so presumably many of them did not had iPads as babies.

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

#90

Post by rsync »

iagooar wrote: 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?"

Yes - you're missing the detail of the first of these generations - those returning to the United States from having served in World War 2, took full advantage of the economic preeminence of the US, and begat the "baby boom generation".

So of course you are correct - births happen continuously and there is not an obvious "banding" of "generations" ... but in this case there was a very clear and pronounced age band, and all of the subsequent "generations" (baby boomers, gen X, gen Y, Millenials, etc.) proceeded from there.

Post reply on HN