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For Millennials you're either working one of the few high paid white collar jobs or working at Mcdonalds asking people if they want fries with that
You are right.....the wage disparity per Millennials is like the Grand Canyon...there is no middle ground between that divide.....
You could also say that either you are a "creative class" millennial working on the coasts or in Austin, Tx, or you live in the hinterlands and work at Wal-Mart, or serve coffee to the creative class(Baristas) in Seattle, Bay Area, LA, Boston, NYC, DC, Austin....same difference...
No middle-class anymore, including Millennials, the first generation to grow up into adulthood without one.
"Would you like that in a Bag?" would be a great title for a book about the Millennials
Which unions did Reagan "bust". Do you mean PATCO, who, as with most government unions/employees then and now, were not allowed to strike but did anyway? Who were then given a chance to return to work and didn't?
So, which unions did Reagan bust.
Unions have declined in membership and influence because the jobs those members had are gone.
An example would be GM. It used to have hundreds of thousands of employees in the US. Now it has less than 100000.
Unions have declined in membership because the jobs were either outsourced or automated out....the main responsibility of a public company is to increase quarterly profits for shareholders....that implies that the more unions that can be eliminated the higher the profits, along with the outsourcing.....
Union power was a very short part of US manufacturing history..all the way up to the 1940's, goons were still hired to bust skulls of protesters, especially in Detroit, Chicago, and Cleveland...
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You can say that union power lasted from about '45 to '81.....after that, after the airtraffic control deal, Corporations removed the jobs first to the Maquiladoras in Mexico, then China, when they found out they could get higher-skilled workers much cheaper..
The American dream is dead. The only way to obtain it is to start a company, pitch your crazy idea and have investors throw you money and then you hire a bunch of foreigners to work for you for nothing.
I must say that many of you are missing the point entirely.
It is not about nor was it ever about the millenials vs. seniors and when you fall for the old divide and conquer tactic, everyone gets screwed.
The real questions we should be asking our members of Congress are like the following:
Why are certain politicians are against projects like the rebuilding of our nation's infrastructure that would improve our roads, rails, and bridges make it is easier and more cost-effective to make goods from place to place, as well as having the benefit creating hundreds of thousands of construction jobs and boosting our economy?, or
Why isn't the cap income on the Social Security tax raised to $1,000,000 or even better, removed altogether, thus, funding Social Security into perpetuity and providing an increase in payments for current and future recipients?
Demonizing and fighting each other is not going to benefit anyone except for those who are benefitting from the status quo.
Most pertinent points made yet on this thread....
Indeed, we are all sailing on the same ship.....only as good as our weakest link as well....
If we decide to slow/stop funding high tech R&D, eliminate funding for education, make it diff for students to afford high ed without being strapped with loans for decades, and write off our younger generations, we will have no workforce to pay for social security as well......it IS a "pay as you go" system, last time I checked....
When the majority of jobs being created in the USA are cheap service jobs, and we stop grooming our young people with vital skills that can compete against the world(stocking shelves at Kohls doesn't count), we will fall as a group......
We could conceivably have third-world disparity between the rich and poor in the USA in ten years, if we don't indeed have that now..
Student Loan Debts and Housing are 2 important issues imo from the perspective of a Millenial. Both will effect the overall Economy.
Student Loan Debts by increasing the amount of sheer spending income of the generation, as well as allowing many Millenials to achieve financial independence. I'm not even advocating for myself on that one. I have very little debt.
Housing because it also increases the spending power of the generation allowing more capital to reach industries outside of Real Estate. We don't need all of the real estate owned by a few wealthy investors. Since living is a necessity now (you can't even be homeless now in a lot of places), people deserve the right to affordable housing. And after that, safe neighborhoods.
There's definitely solutions. Whether or not they could survive through our corrupt government is another thing.
Very similar to the crowding-out effect of cheap gasoline, but opposite......cheap gas has juiced up the profits of retail and bars/restaurants in the last 4 or so months....juxtapose that to the opposite, the crowding-out of student loans to spending...not to mention we need spending to jumpstart our economy....prob the main reason there has been no noticable increase in spending since we came out of the recession in 2010(four long years already!) is that the main spenders, from say 21-38, are strapped for college loans up the yin-yang..
I understand the OP. I think it's probably definately harder for people my age group (I'm 32) to grab on to that American dream. Both my parents found jobs in their 20's that they enjoyed and moved up through the companies. My father actually worked at the same place (Piper Aircraft) until he died. He started out as the person checking tools in and out of the shed and eventually was promoted to upper management.
What I've found in my employment history is that I get an entry-level job and then there's no where to go despite being told there was room for growth. At one of my jobs I was there for 3 years in the same position and when I had my annual review, I asked about opportunities for growth and development and was basically told they weren't willing to invest in me.
Understand I wasn't asking for a promotion. I was simply saying I would like to learn more things so I can be a greater asset to the company but their position was no one was quitting, retiring or being terminated so they weren't going to waste time training me for a position that didn't exist because I would most likely use that training and go somewhere else.
I left anyway.
On a side note: a lot of what my father did in his early days at Piper is now being done by a machine.
Another issue is that companies are only looking for someone already skilled with experience for many positions, white and blue collar....
Classic chicken-and egg deal........was not the case in booming times, when training was done in house.
I had many relatives that worked for a lifetime at the old Ma Bell(At&T), who had zero training to start, and learned everything on the job, not to mention a lifetime one with pensions they still enjoy...
Yet in another post where I explained that I DID live in those years and gave you a real time example to refute your "data"..........you blew me off as not knowing what I was talking about.......
If your an example of these "milenials"........I can see one of your problems.........
Anecdotes are just anecdotes, data is data. Many things people attributed to Reagan happened well before reagan. Same thing with unions. For every anecdote one way there an anecdote showing the exact opposite. That's why they're generally not to be trusted. People see things through their ideological lens. You especially.
I sell real estate, and the norm for real estate agents is about 40K in the USA now.......for car salesmen about 60K........I cannot fathom 100K being the norm/average for cars...
If you are in sales, you have heard of the 80/20 rule. That means 20% of the salesmen make 80% of the commissions and hugely skew the averages....
100K+ would be the income for the very top people anywhere, including car sales......no way in hell that all the salespeople in furniture stores are making 100K.......the experienced/top people there for years prob more than 100K, but for the new and average salesmen of any sales staff, much less..
If you were mentioning finance, I could see that, per boiler plate "Wolf of Wall Street" places, and the more respectable Edward Jones joints......
With on-line sales, those days of 100K commissions are long gone for most everyone, and many entire chains have went under per the web, including Borders and such...
Again, the world is a different place now.....
I'm shocked ,SHOCKED, to discover you're a salesman! What with you illustrating every post with manipulative pictures and all!
When did the 18-34 cohort ever have a high net worth?
Why would anyone think that cohort would have a high net worth?
Why shouldn't the oldest cohort, who spent their lives working and accumulating wealth, have the highest?
In related news: Millennial Generation Identified as Having the Most Unrealistic Expectations
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