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Fed Says Millennials Are Just Like Their Parents, Only Poorer

bloomberg.com

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

#91

Post by Vraxx »

thfuran wrote: post #75
Vraxx wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

It seems like I did with my words, but I did not mean to. Thanks for pointing that out, I'm just as guilty of all of the behaviors I described which is part of what helps me recognize the pattern in the first place.

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

#92

Post by jopsen »

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…

It's often lost on us how much more you can buy for a dollar today vs. 40 years ago (when corrected for inflation).

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

#93

Post by thomaskcr »

enraged_camel wrote: post #28
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…

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

I think it's just hard to compare between the generations due to changes in how lifestyles are financed. My parents came out of school with no debt and were able to buy a house way before me. I came out of school with considerable debt and wasn't able to buy a house for a while.

On the flip side, my parents talk about when I was first born and they had to choose between two toys because they couldn't afford both (a mirror and a little bird - maybe $20 each). I have never had an issue with access to money, even when I had nearly nothing in the bank and was paying down my student loans as fast as possible and something came up - a quick call to the bank was all that stood between me and enough to finance a full repair across the next 3 months instead of a bandaid. My parents didn't have that type of access to credit.

Me and my dad worked in a similar role (software development - him for a bank, me for defense) out of college. Granted, even inflation adjusted I made a lot more than him right out of school.

Also, even though my parents had a house way younger than me I wouldn't want a credit card with the interest rate my parents were paying on their house. It was insane.

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

#94

Post by wool_gather »

sdegutis wrote: post #20
roymurdock wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't work in marketing/advertising. Companies need to segment populations of consumers with similar characteristics to effectively advertise, tailor products, and sell to them. One of the most common demographic dividers is age. Different "generations" are grouped together because the members of their population exhibit similar income and expenditure patterns on average.

Generations has been a concept long before marketing. I do wonder about who draws the line for where a generation begins/ends, but the concept is pretty clear: you are one generation, your children another, your parents another, your grandparents another. Hence the base word "generate".

> I do wonder about who draws the line for where a generation begins/ends

It's not really fixed as far as I can tell. Around the actual turn of the millennium, millennials were said to start in 1980. Now it's more commonly pegged at 1982.

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

#95

Post by pacala »

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…

It's a lot of fun to be in your '50s, have your body start to fall apart and be a few paychecks away from being thrown into the streets. But hey, you could afford having a few beers with your friends in your '20s. Or even take a holiday, you rich bastard.

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

#96

Post by simias »

I always find it a bit strange when people pit generations against one another. It's common to find articles complaining about millennial, I also often see young people online complaining about how "baby boomers ruined everything".

I mean, do we seriously believe that if we magically swapped these generations around things would've gone massively differently? I know that Americans put the individual first and foremost but I have absolutely no doubt that the current generation would have done mostly exactly the same mistakes if we had been born a few decades earlier. And similarly I'm pretty sure that my grandmother would be wasting her time on Instagram or playing Fortnite if she was born today. Does anybody really believe otherwise?

It's such a ridiculous thing to do. It's not like you can chose when you're born. It's just a way to deflect your own problems onto other people while at the same time not proposing anything constructive to move forward.

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

#97

Post by Sargos »

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.

It's a self fulfilling prophecy.

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

#98

Post by gbear605 »

gerbilly wrote: post #15
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?

> Who draws a line between generations and why? Market research organizations I think. They segment people into generations (and smaller subcategories) in order to better understand how to sell them products and services. They are marketing buckets. The corporate mindset is so pervasive in north america, that we take on their concepts and discuss them even outside of their area of application. This is why we talk abo…

We talk about which movie grossed the most because it’s the best proxy we have for how many people saw it, not mainly because we care about how much the production company made.

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

#99

Post by tubbs »

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…

The greatest takeaway from this is that we [millenials] ought to make an effort to treat Generation Z with a respect that we are often not given. Let's not propagate that nastiness down the line.

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

#100

Post by potta_coffee »

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?

I was born in 1984. I had a curious upbringing, true, but I find I have very little in common with "kids" born in 1997, the last year of my "generation". In 1997, I was a freshman in highschool. Things changed dramatically between '97 and '10. For instance, kids my age didn't grow up with social media, we had land lines and dial up internet, and none of us had cell phones.
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