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There are more than "some". Better look around because there are entire generations of immigrants who show up with little and not only aspire to better themselves but actually do it. I think your portrayal and understanding is outdated and doesn't reflect what is actually going on. In any case, there seems to be a lot more millennials complaining about things and blaming their parents than going out and doing. Take away the Facebook, Twitter and Instagram and many millennials would have a nervous breakdown, it is how they define themselves. Most wouldn't know what to with a blank piece of paper and a pen. Millennials are a lost generation, not because of anything but their own give me attitude. There is nothing to give, it must be earned. No job? Create your own, figure it out, that is what the parents did.
Boy, I seem to remember hearing that about the Millenials' parents, the boomers, those dreaded Hippies from Woodstock..
fact is, since the ancient days of Greece, each generation says that about the generation after them..
I'm sure Alaxander the Great did as well..
The fact is, when the seniors came up(and most of the boomers time coming up), the US was at the top of the economic world.....The Chinese were still largely biking around with Mao books and bags of rice...gas was 19 cents a gallon.....living wage jobs were a dime a dozen....Hispanic laborers did not come here yet to level the trades....
This is simply the first generation to live in a declining US economy, with far less hope than even their parents to get ahead(let alone buy a home and raise a family)..
One of the things that is bothering me about this thread is that it appears some posters are stuck thinking that that young people striking out on their own and establishing financially-independent households by age 22 is the historical norm. I know that in my own family history there are many stories of families banding together in rough times, living cheek by jowl with other relatives in cramped quarters. My own father slept on a roll-away cot in the dining room of an aunt's house for several years after his family suffered a reversal of fortune. This was not a particularly unusual event for his large extended family nor for many households of the era. I'm not trying to diminish the struggles young people are experiencing right now; I'm just trying to point out that the '50s prosperity that some are holding up as the norm was actually a bit of an outlier.
That's the myth, but it's mostly hot air. Just look where the boomers ended up. The article is hot on "the average," but the facts are that 1/3 of boomers have no retirement savings at all, and another 1/3 have less than 1 year's income in retirement savings. They got laid off, downsized and regulated out of existence. At the end of the day, only about a quarter of boomers will have a comfortable retirement, and the rest look forward to a life of poverty or working until they die, perhaps both.
America has never been as affluent as the pretty magazine pictures would lead you to believe. There is good reason that Thoreau's quote, "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation," has resonated with Americans for two centuries.
The current crop of millennials will probably do about as well as their boomer grandparents. A quarter will end up financially comfortable, and the rest will end up broke.
Larry, the seniors who have the 200K nest eggs(that itself not much) are the older boomers and the silent generation folks(66-85 ish)...
The ones that are really hurting are Generation X families(35-52ish).....they have an average net worth of 33 K....thats horrid and frightening, for our future and theirs....
That last stat should make everyone cry...especially as many of the Millennials parents are in that group...
Following up on this theme, the Millennials are already following in the Boomers' footsteps. Many Boomers had no job prospects when they graduated college, because there was a recession at the time. That's one big reason "communes" (shared households) were invented--because a lot of people couldn't pay standard rent on their own place, they had to share rent on a house, paying for a room, or even sharing a room with a gf/bf. A few got jobs due to a gov't program that paid employers to hire college grads in dead-end entry-level jobs (receptionist, and the like). A few did get jobs in their field, or entry-level jobs that were the first step in a pathway to a good career. The economic circumstances were very similar to what we're seeing now, except that the federal gov't wasn't saddled with the crushing debt it has now, so it could afford better stimulus packages, ones that actually got some people at least minimal employment.
Now that the gov't is pushing the Social Security qualification age back farther and farther, it needs to pay employers to hire seniors, so that they can span the gap between getting laid off for the crime of passing 50, and the ever-retreating SS age.
With the housing bust, many seniors will not be able to retire as well, as they were relying on that nest egg, so they will be working with Millennials at places like Target and such, and should get to know them very well...
Exactly! Many young people today expect to have a 3500 square foot McMansion with a 3 car garage and granite countertops, in addition to a new SUV. People in my grandparents generation were thankful to even own a home with central heat and air. I blame much of it on TV, which makes all of these luxurious things seem like the norm.
No, that was the boomers that expected and got that, with cheap credit that no longer exists....
Their children are not missing anything as that trend has left the building, along with yellow polyester
dance suits and disco..
IMO one of the biggest problems facing young people when it comes to building wealth is lack or teamwork and commitment. I’ve known too many young people that are still taking cues from pop culture when it comes to relationships. The dysfunctional is now something to be celebrated even it means you go to the poor house. A lot of people young and old would be a lot better off asking themselves if the other person can bring something to the table instead of just something to the bedroom.
This is the situation, the WWII generation accumulated the largest amount of wealth ever in history. They did this through a mixture of hard work, a frugal lifestyle, a good savings ethic, and the luck of being the only industrialized country left after WWII from which the rest of the world needed to purchase most of their manufactured needs.
They achieved a level of real wealth never seen before and may never be seen again. They passed that wealth on to their children the boomers, who were targeted by the wealthy and by corporate interests who had their sights set on getting the 80 billion dollars they collectively inherited.
The wealthy sought to get that wealth by pandering to the sense of entitlement the boomers had been raised with and the knowledge that they were a generation of incredibly selfish people.
They relieved the boomers of their wealth by getting them to purchase assets at inflated prices during a series of "boom cycles" and by living beyond their means by way of credit.
As the boomers become geriatrics the majority of their net wealth is held in paper value in things like real estate and equities for which they have exchanged their cash and some portion of future earnings. The problem with this is that the paper value of these assets is dependent on younger generation being in the position of purchasing the boomers assets at todays inflated prices.
The truth is that generation X and the millennials do not have the income or the money to purchase the boomers assets at todays prices and so as the laws of supply and demand dictate, at some point the value of those assets will fall as tens of millions of boomers try to sell assets into a market that has little cash to purchase them.
So to answer the OP's question, is there hope for the 18 to 34's? Yes and no, they will never see the kind of prosperity the boomers enjoyed because the money the boomers had inherited has flowed to the wealthy in exchange for paper assets which at some point in the future will be devalued by deflation. They will however be able to purchase assets like real estate at lower values than today as boomers need to sell assets.
The prosperity of the past 70 years was a aberration which will not be the rule going forward just as it was not the rule prior to WWII.
What are we supposed to do with THESE then?
Well, there's always subdividing......
Seriously, though, this is the most intelligent post of all so far(saying a lot, as so many here are fantastic)......
Exactly, the point again and again, to this post is it is STRUCTURAL, per the changed US economy, and the world the younger generations to come in the US will be dealing with.
In our world(I'm 52, though some think I am a Millennium on here for some reason) we did not have to compete with Indians and Chinese on a world level, let along the fact that aliens did not come enmasse over the border to level the field in the trades....
Per real estate, there are very few new home buyers now out there, for the reasons we mentioned.
Good luck, seniors selling your homes, if you are hoping for those aforesaid home values to come up anytime soon......
Again, those McMansions will largely been subdivided in years to come....
I see you guys talking about how the laws of supply and demand are going to be suspended, especially as they relate to real estate.
You all do know that the millennial generation is larger than the Boomer generation. Not all of them will be new urbanists and move to the cities. Actually most won't. They will want to buy housing at some point. Now, will real estate increase at the rate of the early 2000s? No. By the way, that run up wasn't driven by the Baby Boom but by Gen X.
Whoever said that their grandfather worked in manufacturing for 30 years and was never laid off before retiring in 1992 had a very, very lucky grandfather. Layoffs were a fact of life in manufacturing starting in about 1960 (actually earlier, as supply caught up with demand after the Korean War ended) with a relatively serious recession occurring about every 3 years from the 1950s through the early 1980s. After each one, former factory workers had to find another employer because during the layoffs automation was increased and more functions were offshored (yes, in the 1950s).
Add to that the fact that until 1973 eighteen year old males really couldn't find jobs (well paying ones) as a rule, contrary to what some of you think about "walking off the street and getting hired on the spot", because of the draft.
And even many of those "well paying jobs" depended on knowing someone in the organization to get.
After the recession of the early 80s we didn't have another one for 10 years. But it was different. It started to hit not just blue collar workers but moved into the white collar ranks. As did the one which started around 1999. Both were relatively mild compared to earlier ones but the rules had changed.
With all respect, blue-collar MASS layoffs(in other words, we are closing down the factory, not just sitting idle for a few months), happened post 1980, starting with the Steel Mills and such.....US manufacturing was very much booming easily to the mid-late 70s, when even Japan was not an issue yet, and there were no mequiladora factories in Mexico yet.
And, per the draft, it was EASIER for young men to find jobs(same as world war 2) in factories, as there was LESS competition, not more...
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