
Young 'to be poorer than parents at every stage of life' - kevindeasis
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-34858997
======
untog
This is interesting to me because (as a 30 year old) it never occurred to me
that I would be more prosperous than my parents. I'd _like_ to be, of course,
but it seems alien to me that there was an era where that was all but
guaranteed. It doesn't matter, except that it explains where a lot of this
older generation's resentment of "the youth" comes from - they haven't faced
the situation we face, so the only way they can make sense of us not
succeeding is that we're simply not trying. When that generation is a large
voting bloc, that poses a problem.

(That said, I suspect most of us HN readers will _not_ be poorer than their
parents. Tech is an area of boom in an economy of bust, after all, so factor
that in when reading responses on here)

~~~
Scarblac
I'm 40 and way poorer than my babyboomer parents. My savings got wiped out in
a housing market crash in 2008, they have made over half a million euro in
their lives just from their houses becoming worth more over time.

They've also both had work most of their adult life, and their pensions funds
have always done well on the stock market, whereas my wife has been without a
job since the financial crisis hit and government in the Netherlands went in
austerity mode.

~~~
logfromblammo
Similar story here. I cashed out a lot of stocks to make a down payment on a
house. Then I had to move to a different city to find work, and lost
_everything I ever put into the house_. I timed the market just right to lose
everything, because my other options were to lose more than that.

I have had more employers in 15 years of work than both of my parents
accumulated over a combined total of nearly 80 years. I have never, ever been
promoted within the same company, but I have been summarily tossed to the curb
for no individually-attributable reason--along with several of my office-mates
--a total of four times.

I have a lot of envy for what the Baby Boomer generation already got, and in
combination with the condescending attitude they have (in aggregate) towards
the younger generations, it fuels a lot of resentment.

Their formula of education plus hard work equals success has not been even
remotely accurate for me. Education plus hard work equals screw you, buddy,
because I already got mine. Enjoy your layoffs and unaffordable housing and
tuition increases well in excess of inflation and slashed employer-granted
benefits and mountains of political debt, because your parents have decided to
sell their house at 20x what they paid for it, buy a plush RV, and split their
well-funded retirement between any convenient US state and Snowbirdland,
Mexico.

And what really kills me is that I have never seen anyone from my parents'
generation working particularly hard. Maybe they did all that before I was
born, and just coasted along afterward? Maybe I don't really know what hard
work looks like?

Well, anyway, thanks for all the inter-generational tension, Boomers. We'll
air it out by having Thanksgiving dinner at your house again this year,
because none of your kids can afford homes big enough to hold everyone.

~~~
Robin_Message
Genuine question: why not rent out the house whilst you were in the other
city? That would have probably covered the mortgage and got you out of the dip
until you could either move back, or the market had picked up again and you
could sell without loss.

------
dkonofalski
What do they mean by "to be poorer"? The current generation already _is_
poorer than previous generations. Income has not kept up with inflation and
the income gap has widened tremendously. That previous generations could
afford a single-family house with 1 person working and with multiple kids.
Now, a double income is almost required, even with renting and not owning, and
the rate of couples without children is rising too.

How can anyone be surprised that a candidate who decries all these things is
having such success? Everyone in the newer generations know that they're
getting the short stick and that we gave it to them. Bernie Sanders is just
pointing out the obvious.

[http://www.dol.gov/wb/factsheets/Qf-
ESWM07.htm](http://www.dol.gov/wb/factsheets/Qf-ESWM07.htm)
[http://www.bls.gov/news.release/famee.nr0.htm](http://www.bls.gov/news.release/famee.nr0.htm)

~~~
enlightenedfool
With two programmer incomes we can't buy a home 35 miles away from Boston. So
pathetic.

~~~
dkonofalski
Sadly it's not surprising. As it was said once on The Wire, "We used to make
things in this country, build things. Now we just put our hand in the next
guy's pocket." That's the economy that the previous generations left us and
that we're perpetuating for our children.

~~~
Phlarp
I feel like there is a lot of context lost in this quote without pointing out
that it's being said by a union dock worker to a lobbyist he has been paying
to bribe politicians with money earned from smuggling prostitutes and heroin
into Baltimore for an international crime syndicate.

~~~
dkonofalski
I agree. The irony of that statement was huge. But it also brings it back to a
"chicken or the egg" scenario. That's what I didn't really want to get into.
Is the dock worker's union struggling because he's been paying the lobbyists
or are they struggling because everyone else was?

------
cryoshon
The article mentions pensions at the end... what's a pension?

Joking aside, I haven't seen outward bitterness regarding their poor lot from
the current young generation so much as doubling-down on the rat race in an
attempt to still top their parents somehow. It's pretty bad for their mental
health, and not very effective so far, but may pay off in the long run.

~~~
JustSomeNobody
A pension is something companies used to provide to their employees. Employees
used to be able to stay their entire career with one company and amass a
pretty decent retirement pension with said company.

Then Wall Street got corrupt. They demanded ever more from companies. Each
quarter had to show more profit from the last otherwise they punished the
company. Wall Street found ways of funneling any profits directly to investors
instead of investing in the company (and, more importantly, it's employees).
Pensions took a hit. Companies stopped offering them. Some companies
'borrowed' from pensions and lost it all. The employees did suffer. Employee
loyalty dropped. Companies took that as an opportunity to treat employees as
temporary; replacing them regularly with cheaper ones.

You'll have to wait until tomorrow night to hear the rest of the story.
G'Night.

~~~
ionised
This is a BBC article and in the UK, pensions are still very much alive.

We receive a state pension at retirement that is dependent on national
insurance contributions over the course of your working life.

You can also contribute to (and have recently probably been automatically
opted into) private workplace pensions that your employer will probably match
(up to a point).

~~~
thinkmoore
This is true in the US, where the state pension is called social security.
Except that conservatives have somehow rebranded this "entitlement" (to which
you are entitled because you pay contributions over your working life) to
something whiny "entitled" workers are unfairly demanding from the government.

------
fatpenguin2015
How does one define poorer?

If you were given the choice to go back in time and live in your parents
generation INSTEAD of the present, your life expectancy is lower, you dont
have the Internet for information.

Overseas Phone Calls were a luxury back then, so was airplane travel. It seems
to me inn absolute terms, the vast majority is better off vs if they were the
same age in the 1980's

~~~
rm_-rf_slash
I think a lot of us would trade long distance calling and Internet access for
the ability to go to college without being indebted for life, find a job that
didn't make you work at home after hours or on the weekends, and be able to
afford a house to maintain and leave for their children.

Being able to afford a new iPhone every other year is not prosperity.

~~~
modoc
Obviously just one anecdote but my parents both had work/on-call in the
evenings and weekends, always had a substantial mortgage on the house which
they had to sell when they split up. I will get zero inheritance. They are
both college educated, smart, hard working people. I made more at 20 years
old, then they both made put together at that same time.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
I grew up on a farm, limited income but lots of personal freedom. Six of us
kids: 5 Engineers and a Nurse. After 1000 generations of dirt farmers, it was
a good change. No inheritance except the opportunity to personally succeed.
Folks like us were launched by their parents.

But there are others who stayed about where they started (or rather their
parents) who can't see much improvement in the last 20 years.

~~~
ForHackernews
When (if) you retire, that farmland will probably be worth more than your
income over your entire career.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Very likely. The $40,000 acreage next to me just sold for $400,000. That would
make mine worth $1M right now!

------
irox859
My grandfather was a carpenter working in a factory that made piano benches.
He worked there his entire career.

He was in his early fifties when he retired and was actually retired longer
than he worked in terms of time, and when he died he still had 6 digits in
assets (not including his house.) He didn't do anything special except live
modestly, save, and buy stocks.

Who can say they'll have the same experience working a blue collar job today?

~~~
austenallred
I think as a rule of thumb anybody working a blue collar job today is in
trouble.

------
mc32
It's probably related to the relative maturity of an economy.

In a growing economy, the odds of offspring doing better than parents is a
function of the economy as many new avenues to prosperity open up. On the one
hand is China where children have more opportunity than parents, on the other
hand is Japan, a mature economy where growth has plateaued so there aren't
massive opportunities for newer generations.

Also, after a certain level of achievement, there isn't much more to be had.
So the progress would be incremental, on average, rather than tectonic, after
the plateauing.

In other words, it's not expected that in large diversified economies there is
the possibility for everyone to become a magnate.

------
rayiner
The caveat is that it's only true in certain developed nations. Maybe real
life proof that free trade is not Pareto optimal.

~~~
pasiaj
How do you reach that conclusion? Doesn't it seem more likely, that rapidly
expanding population in the face of scarce resources leaves a decreasing share
of a smaller pie for the newcomers?

~~~
RobertoG
If the problem is that the pie is smaller, shouldn't we see how the GDP per
capita goes down?

[https://www.google.fr/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&m...](https://www.google.fr/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&met_y=ny_gdp_pcap_cd&idim=country:USA:GBR:CAN&hl=en&dl=en)

------
atinybitanon
I make more than my parents combined ever did, even if you count for
inflation. Though they seemed to have a higher quality of life. I suspect this
has to do with other factors, mostly my own short commings.

~~~
merpnderp
People eat out quite a bit more than their parents did. This is probably the
single biggest cost difference between this generation and their parents. $20
a plate at Applebees versus $3 a plate at home.

~~~
zbyte64
Factor in time spent cooking. $3 a plate would either mean cooking up a large
batch or eating mac&cheese. You couldn't drag me into an Applebees...

~~~
AnimalMuppet
But what do you do with the time if you don't cook? Do you sit in front of the
TV, searching for something worth watching so that you're not bored? If so,
then taking the time to cook is free, because you're essentially valuing your
time at zero.

~~~
merpnderp
You sit at a table waiting an hour for your food to arrive. I cook a majority
of the meals for my family, and they are healthy, cheap, and never take me
more than 30 minutes, and most of that is waiting for water to boil or
stirring something occasionally.

------
evanpw
Here's a post with some actual charts and numbers:
[http://www.forbes.com/sites/ashleaebeling/2013/03/15/gen-
x-a...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/ashleaebeling/2013/03/15/gen-x-and-gen-y-
wealth-stagnates/). The conclusions looks like:

1) People in the age range 29-37 (cherry-picked?) are less wealthy than the
previous generation. The Great Recession explains a lot of the difference.

2) All other age groups are wealthier than the previous generation, but the
gain is much smaller than it has been in the past.

------
pitt1980
this is so dependent on the macro economy in which you live, its almost
completely independent of you

[http://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2013/08/26-years-of-
growth-...](http://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2013/08/26-years-of-growth-
shanghai-then-and-now/100569/)

can you imagine having been a 10 year old in Shanghai in 1987?

------
fatpenguin2015
Just a quick informal poll if its allowed.

For users/people who think you are "worse off" vs back then, could you let us
know which country you are in?

For users who grew up in Asia/developing countries, I would think the young
nowadays have a lot more opportunities/chances to strike it rich.

What seems to be occurring at this stage = there used to be a income/price
discrepancy for work done, solely because most work had to be performed by
locals. The main change now is a lot more of this work can be given/outsourced
to employees who have lower wages in developing countries.

It would be interesting to see the results of the poll.

~~~
rwallace
Ireland here. Peaked maybe two or three decades later than the US did, but
yes, my countrymen seem determined to import all the systemic corruption and
waste and follow the Americans on their downward spiral, so unless that
changes, we are now at the stage where each generation is fewer and in real
terms poorer than the last.

------
jusssi
Makes sense. More people fighting over the same finite amount of resources,
leads to less per person.

Eventually, no matter how imaginary money is, it's used to buy non-imaginary
resources.

~~~
refurb
That makes no sense. Resources are fixed but incomes have grow by what? 5 fold
in the last 100 years? Lots more people now than then!

~~~
jusssi
In the last 100 years, the advance of science and technology has enabled us to
make better use of those resources, making people wealthier. Population growth
seems to be catching up with the advance now, leaving less resources per
capita.

Or maybe it's just slower times before the next big breakthrough. Infinite
energy from fusion, and AI doing all our work would certainly allow us to
truly fill up the world.

------
johngalt
Houses are bigger, cars are safer, faster and more efficient, medicines are
more prevalent, entertainment options have increased incalculably.

I guess I don't feel poorer.

------
carsongross
The Great Intergenerational War has been a one-way fight thus far.

How do you do, fellow kids?

[https://media4.giphy.com/media/ifxLK48cnyDDi/200_s.gif](https://media4.giphy.com/media/ifxLK48cnyDDi/200_s.gif)

Gen X stands ready to assume out natural leadership position in the
counterrevolution. Our cynicism coupled with your enthusiasm...

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBQVrCflZ_E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBQVrCflZ_E)

