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You do realize people are living longer and opportunities for today's young people couldn't even have been imagined.
Advances in medicine have made advances nothing short of miraculous.
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Rich people are living longer and rich people have access to the best medical care. Poor people, or better stated, those that aren't wealthy, are living worse and living shorter.
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Don't forget advances in safety... people routinely survive car crashes that would have been fatal just a few years back.
That's a good thing as more people than ever are being forced to live out of their cars.
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The cost of fuel inflation adjusted has never been cheaper... a Texas Instruments Calculator with basic functions costs a months pay and today far more powerful calculators are given away...
Irrelevant.
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Kids today have never been more connected with more information at a touch of their fingers than ever before.
Ahh, the argument that education in and of itself creates a better standard of living. I don't subscribe to that argument. What good is all this knowledge when you can't afford to support your family?
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Air Travel was once for the well to do and my friends kids are taking $59 flights on Southwest just because they can.
When I grew up in the 70s and 80s a much higher percentage of the population travelled by air than they do now.
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No one in my family has ever had a pension... we also never had health insurance growing up...
If you didn't have health insurance when you were growing up, you were an outlier. Please don't try and pass it off like this was normal back then.
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Any talk of inflation would not be complete without looking at the Carter years... gas lines... not knowing when and where the next gallon of gas was coming from.
Nothing compared the inflation of health insurance/healthcare costs, college education, and housing.
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Now to keep it real... do you have any idea what it was like to live in segregation?
No, I don't. And I certainly don't advocate for it, either. However that's got nothing to do with the discussion at hand.
This has been happening since the 70s. With the internet and the immediate gratification movement has come an absolute lack of historical perspective as everyone tries to blame some group(s) or political party for what has happened. No wonder a guy like Trump is so popular. He just reinforces people's fictional beliefs. Nothing is happening "again."
This country needs to evolve and adapt to a new reality, and stop trying to 'Make America Anything Again.'
"...finally an unprecedented resignation—all these riveted the nation’s attention in 1974. Hardly anyone paid attention to a story that seemed no more than a statistical oddity: That year, for the first time since the end of World War II, Americans’ wages declined...
...Then, it all stopped. In 1974, wages fell by 2.1 percent and median household income shrunk by $1,500. To be sure, it was a year of mild recession, but the nation had experienced five previous downturns during its 25-year run of prosperity without seeing wages come down.
What no one grasped at the time was that this wasn’t a one-year anomaly, that 1974 would mark a fundamental breakpoint in American economic history. In the years since, the tide has continued to rise, but a growing number of boats have been chained to the bottom..."
Why should Americans accept a new reality of the top 1% keeping all of the profits for themselves? That's pretty much the opposite attitude that I believe is necessary to turn things around.
I've had the good fortune of stumbling into a really good job in a low cost of living area. But will I be better off than my Boomer predecessors?
(This is not intended to be a generational war, but I'm going to pick on Boomers since my office is full of them.)
Well, let's take a look at a few statistics.
Retirement?
I pay 10.6% of my salary into retirement and expect to get 33% at retirement, assuming I work 30 years.
Boomers paid 7.0% of their salary and got 56.25% for working the same 30 years.
If you worked 40 years, the number would get more lopsided - 44% for me, 76.25% for them.
In theory, Social Security will help close the gap for me - well, 78% of it will be there.
Healthcare?
Today, an example health plan costs $51.67 on a biweekly basis for a single person.
Five years ago - not 30 years ago - that same plan cost $34.27, or about 40% less. (It's on page 38 of that pdf.)
Taxes?
Well, let's pluck a starter home off Zillow as an example.
In 2004, the property tax on the home was $2,046.
In 2014, that property tax burden increased to $3,240 - or about a 50% increase in ten years. The property values, of course, went nowhere in that time.
Rich people are living longer and rich people have access to the best medical care. Poor people, or better stated, those that aren't wealthy, are living worse and living shorter.
That's a good thing as more people than ever are being forced to live out of their cars.
Irrelevant.
Ahh, the argument that education in and of itself creates a better standard of living. I don't subscribe to that argument. What good is all this knowledge when you can't afford to support your family?
When I grew up in the 70s and 80s a much higher percentage of the population travelled by air than they do now.
If you didn't have health insurance when you were growing up, you were an outlier. Please don't try and pass it off like this was normal back then.
Nothing compared the inflation of health insurance/healthcare costs, college education, and housing.
No, I don't. And I certainly don't advocate for it, either. However that's got nothing to do with the discussion at hand.
You are focused on Health Care... didn't you get the memo that Affordable Health Care is the law of the Land?
Poor and rich get Health Care... it is those in the middle that struggle...
I Managed an apartment building and rented a unit to single mom and her daughter... the mom was 31 when she became a Grandmother... her grandson was born with a Heart Defect that required a million dollars worth of medical care and most of it was at Stanford... the family was on Section 8 and never was billed or paid a penny for the finest medical care in the country...
That child would have died in an earlier time...
We create our own reality baring illness... anyone that believes the best days are behind will find this a self fulfilling prophecy...
Quote: "For the first time in France, recent pensioners generated more disposable income than families headed by a person under 50. In Italy the average under-35 became poorer than average pensioners under 80. Using the most recent US data, in the midst of the downturn in 2013, average under-30s had less income than those aged 65-79. This is the first time that has happened as far back as the data goes."
The phenomenon is happening across the entire first world. Millennials have less income, less purchasing power, and more debt (American millennials are sitting on 1.3 trillion dollars of student loans). They're not expecting us to have any kids basically, and they shouldn't.
Examples to the contrary are wonderful, but they are also outliers and those people should thank their good fortune (also be thankful that their parents bought a house when property values were lower; maybe they can leave those kids something).
Except why are people complaining about the so called millennials having it bad based on just 1 decade?
I mean, if picking any random decades, the ones with the Vietnam war wasn't a cake walk either...
Or any of the ones with drafts...
It hasn't even been a full decade since the 2008-9 collapse and people are bemoaning that the rest of their lives are now in the **** can... if anything, most millennials were still in school in 08-9 so they missed it for the most part.
In another 10 years, people should have their loans paid off, they should have a house/mortgage and be settled into a career..., and they will still be in their 30s
Except why are people complaining about the so called millennials having it bad based on just 1 decade?
I mean, if picking any random decades, the ones with the Vietnam war wasn't a cake walk either...
Or any of the ones with drafts...
It hasn't even been a full decade since the 2008-9 collapse and people are bemoaning that the rest of their lives are now in the **** can... if anything, most millennials were still in school in 08-9 so they missed it for the most part.
In another 10 years, people should have their loans paid off, they should have a house/mortgage and be settled into a career..., and they will still be in their 30s
Historically, those that enter the workforce during a bear market have lower lifetime earnings for the duration of their careers.
Historically, those that enter the workforce during a bear market have lower lifetime earnings for the duration of their careers.
By how much, and why?
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