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Massive student debt, healthcare costs, inflation, daycare costs, very expensive housing (rent or own), trying to care for penny-less aging boomer parents (tax-change makes this MUCH worse), etc can make the future look very bleak. Also, practically none of them have pensions, so retirement savings is completely on them.
Not quite. An article that came out just the other day talked about how the majority of millennials rely on their parents for support. As for the rest of the list, it's because they want their cake and eat it too. They want a top-level education in a field that pays little, and refuse to take in roommates to cut costs. As for pensions, those haven't been a viable retirement strategy in a very long time. Gone before my working days ramped up, and I'm in my 50's. I've always known that my retirement will be completely on me.
Exactly.
You know, maybe if these youngsters started to <gasp!> listen to us old farts, they might just <double gasp!> learn something.
I mean we GenXers have lived a good chunk of life and have learned many hard lessons.
Millennials can't even manage their current lives, let alone planning ANYTHING whatsoever for their future.
I guess you'll just have to wait and see how they fare when they get to retirement age. Until then, they will be paying for your retirement benefits. Enjoy!
Except it was the boomers who pushed hard to call discipline child abuse.
However. Not all boomers. Just the ones that were in politics and education.
*Millennial here* I'm all for discussing the differences between generations and I often do side with many of the viewpoints of boomers as I was raised in an old school upbringing. As a result, I do not face the same plaguing issues as most of my generation... they were indoctrinated from kindergarten - college. I never fell for it. Not once.
There's a meme that applies.
Hard times create hard men.
Hard men create good times.
Good times produce weak/soft men.
Weak/soft men produce hard times.
Images in the meme showing the rise and fall of the Roman Empire... that whole Democracy thing...
Ah, memes....as if proving the point!
Ask Russia about the great times their hard men (arguably vastly harder than most on the planet) created.
We live in the age where "hard" involves training to push a button to launch a nuke or cruise missile. It's not really hard in the sense that you imagine. "Hard" pilots sit in Tampa or Nevada and bomb people on the other side of the world.
Wouldn't men be "harder" if they dug ditches instead of using a backhoe or ditchwitch?
One place of big time agreement that some of us may have is that capitalism, in the form of drugs to "cure" all ills, are partially responsible for the lack of responsibility shown by many. It's not that I don't believe in chemicals (I certainly do), but I also believe that the free market and capitalism has made it so drugs are pushed now as the first and possibly only avenue of repair of the soul. It's so easy to fill that hole in the soul with drink, drugs, fatty foods, video games and drama streaming TV.
The USA has a crisis of the spirt that so few want to talk about. It's fairly deep....but it's been alluded to many times. Lack of community - lack of loving thy neighbor as thyself - lack of knowledge of the world around us (especially history) - lack of knowledge about the harm we have done both here and elsewhere.....and the effect it has on us (whether we admit it or not, it's still there...even a peace activist that pays their taxes is complicit in arms sales and production).
The world is/has changed and we have not....we are hiding our heads in the sand and longing for the "good old days" of Jim Crow and mighty weapons unleashed....
You must have had a unique upbringing. These issues have been around forever.
Pensions? Really? Nobody in GenX has a pension.
My upbringing had nothing to do with cost of education. Nothing to do with cost of health care. Nothing to do with cost of daycare. Nothing to do with the fact that companies still offered pensions. Nothing to do with income/housing ratio, it had nothing to do with any of the issues I mentioned. I got on a heck of a start because I started my working career in 1990, and the economy boomed for the next 15 years. Many Millenials started just when the economy crashed.
I'm a boomer and I think it's just sad that millennials are more depressed and less healthy. What is there to joke about?
So we are actually younger boomers (1953 or so), but our kids are already past 40 and have law, engineering and Psyche and teaching degrees and have one child each (intentionally) and have houses and a car and jobs and all that stuff. None are obese and all of them know about the world
All are married...happily to whatever extent (within normal bounds given the suffering and problems of existence).
I'd say ALL are - in effect - saner than my parent generation (end of the Greatest Generation) where money and personal appearance were God (think Hugh Hefner and all of that stuff) and the craving for upward mobility - which often included leaving much of your family and relatives behind - seemed the driving force.
Life is Suffering...as the Buddha and even Big J have noted. But we in the USA often live in a special alternative universe where we lack appreciation for what we have...and lack knowledge about how we got it and retain it.
In a sense the world is passing many of us by. Not all of us. But many.
The pols with ideas of "national service" interest me....NOT military service (although it would be one of the options), but service enough to see those around you. So many people go through life and have little idea of what is on the other side of the tracks, let alone on the other side of the world.
Some of our very good people, IMHO, are those who did the Peace Corps and other such ventures. My Daughters did Americorp and other similar ventures...one spent a summer in Detroit painting for low income housing and neighborhoods (senior year of high school).
We need the Rubber of good intentions to meet the Road of service and improvement of our fellows and the environment around us..IMHO.
I guess you'll just have to wait and see how they fare when they get to retirement age. Until then, they will be paying for your retirement benefits. Enjoy!
Nope. I'll actually get LESS than I paid in SS tax. I LOSE on the deal. So will most people. Only the low-income get more in SS benefits now than they paid in SS tax.
The AP published an article a few years ago about how higher income earners have been losing money on SS since the 1990s, and now the middle class is losing money on SS, too. Only the low-income, on average, will get more in SS benefits than they paid in SS tax.
Quote:
"As recently as 1985, workers at every income level could retire and expect to get more in benefits than they paid in Social Security taxes, though they didn't do quite as well as their parents and grandparents.
Not anymore.
A married couple retiring last year after both spouses earned average lifetime wages paid about $598,000 in Social Security taxes during their careers. They can expect to collect about $556,000 in benefits, if the man lives to 82 and the woman lives to 85, according to a 2011 study by the Urban Institute, a Washington think tank.
Social Security benefits are progressive, so most low-income workers retiring today still will get slightly more in benefits than they paid in taxes. Most high-income workers started getting less in benefits than they paid in taxes in the 1990s, according to data from the Social Security Administration."
As far as Medicare, since there's no cap on the Medicare tax, I've paid in FAR more than most people while maintaining good health. I'm also not likely to get my money back on that, either, with all the premiums, co-pays, and deductibles one has to pay for Medicare. Medicare is NOT free, by any stretch of the imagination.
Or maybe it's the modern USA that "Trickle down" and "Free Market" Republicans have created for them? The Wars? The inequality?
It would seem that the results of all these policies are something we can all agree on.....being as the statistics clearly show them.
Also, you forgot to mention the single biggest driver - the GWB Great Recession, which effectively told all those who worked hard and educated themselves that they did so largely in vain. The game was rigged.
it must be terribly hard going thru life as a constant victim
Nope. I'll actually get LESS than I paid in SS tax. I LOSE on the deal. So will most people. Only the low-income get more in SS benefits now than they paid in SS tax.
That is 100% irrelevant. The money you put in is already spent, and millennials will pay for your benefits.
If you want to credit yourself for the blessing of the booming 1980s and 1990s economies, that is fine. Whatever makes you happy. I did my part, but at the same time I feel blessed to have worked during those times, because those years were booming, with a capital "B".
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