
Millennials 'set to earn less than Generation X' - nshelly
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-36821582
======
drchiu
I think for many millennials, the conclusion of this article doesn't come as a
surprise. As a member between the Gen X and the millennial crowd, I've
certainly seen how much harder people just a few years younger than me have it
as well as how much easier for those slightly older.

Older generations don't realize that their wealth is primarily built up in
what is really an elaborate ponzi scheme of sorts, money which is really
borrowed from future generations.

~~~
bbcbasic
Stagnating wages, rapidly increasing house prices, bad terms for renters,
increasing university costs.

If I were 20 I'd consider working remote and just go live in a much cheaper
country. You could get a boomer lifestyle yet!

~~~
vacri
As an X-er watching the millenials and the boomers lobbing grenades at each
other, it amuses me that the millenial argument sounds like this: "Those
greedy boomers have fucked up the world for everyone else with their overly
lavish and unsustainable lifestyles... and they won't let us into their cushy
club!"

Point of fact is that if you were to give the choice between today's 20-year-
old lifestyle and the same in 1970, you'd be insane to choose 1970,
_especially_ if you were a minority or a woman. Sure, houses are cheaper in
`70, but the jobs are much more menial, life is less comfortable, medicine is
less advanced (particularly pain medication), social opportunities are much
more stratified, entertainment is much harder to get, communication is
considerably more limited, shopping times are much more limited, so on and so
forth. Summing up the differences between now and then as merely "houses and
uni costs" is basically just propaganda.

~~~
dredmorbius
The factual errors in your argument are extreme.

Working class wages were proportionately higher in 1970. Drawing a dividing
line is hard, but somewhere between 1970 and 1980, wage gains became decoupled
from productivity increases.

Medicine quite simply hasn't advanced significantly since 1970. _Access_ to
medicine by the underserved has, and accounts for much of increases in
outcomes, as well as reduced environmental polutants and healthier lifestyles:
clean air, clean water, unleaded petrol, lead-free paint, reduced smoking, and
reduced alcohol consumption.

"Lifestyle" shopping was only just being invented at about this time --
shopping as recreation largley didn't exist. "Amazon" was called "Sears,
Roebuck", you could buy a house, or a bed, or a wardrobe, with a 100%
satisfaction guarantee.

Communications and entertainment are about the _only_ area with significant
improement, though I'd argue the quality of news coverage 1970 - 1980 was far
higher than today -- most cities had multiple local papers with detailed
coverage, and newsmagazines weren't the joke they are today. Television was
more limited and video didn't exist, but movie theaters were much more common
(and cheaper), and live performances easier to find. There was also a form of
entertainment and information called "books", freely available in these
terminal service devices called "libraries".

You've failed to account for decreased labour union participation (stronger
job security), general life and housing security, highly subsidised
educational opportunities, the burgeoning of opportunities resulting from the
1950s and 1960s Civil Rights movement, the long boom in opportunity in
California (offsetting the decline of the rust belt), affordable air
conditioning making life in the southeast comfortable for the first time, and
the fact that in 1970, the advances of the next 30 years were rapidly
approaching. I (and others) see the information revolution as largely played
out -- its peak period seemed to be ~1995 - 2005.

Sources: varied, though Robert Gordon's _The Rise and Fall of American Growth_
covers much of the changes in lifestyle, transport, health, communications,
and work, from 1870 - 2015. It's especially damning on info/comms technologies
excepting 1995-2005, and healthcare since 1970. Thomas Piketty's _Capital in
the 21st Century_ is one of many books addressing the rise in inequality, see
also Anthony Atkinson's _Inequality_.

~~~
jbandela1
> Medicine quite simply hasn't advanced significantly since 1970

This is not true. Here are just 3 examples:

1\. Childhood cancer - Less than 50% 5 year survival in 1970 vs greater than
80% 5 year survival now. [http://www.cancer.gov/types/childhood-cancers/child-
adolesce...](http://www.cancer.gov/types/childhood-cancers/child-adolescent-
cancers-fact-sheet)

2\. Anything dealing with the brain including diagnosis and treatment. Before
CT and MRI - neurologists and neurosurgeons where operating blind. CT and MRI
combined with computer technology allow the surgeon to plan and execute a much
safer and gentler approach. In addition, during this time, our knowledge of
practical neuro-anatomy has increased and enabled much better surgical
approaches.

3\. Low birthweight/premature infant mortality - We are much better at saving
low birthweight / premature infants. See
[http://www.hrsa.gov/healthit/images/mchb_infantmortality_pub...](http://www.hrsa.gov/healthit/images/mchb_infantmortality_pub.pdf)

I would call these significant medical advances.

If you are talking about public health advances as opposed to medical
advances, then actually good nutrition, good sanitation, and elimination of
environmental toxins is probably responsible for almost the entire improvement
in life expectancy. However, this has been truethroughout history and is not
something new since the 1970's.

~~~
dredmorbius
Overal LE increased at twice the rate 1900-1950 as 1950-2000. Source: Gordon
2016.

One of the NYTime health reporters had a statistc in a 1990s book that 85% of
human L.E. improvements were from public health, not diect medical, meaasures.
Laurie Garret IIRC.

[https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/12627.Laurie_Garrett](https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/12627.Laurie_Garrett)

"In all, 86 per cent of the increased life expectancy was due to decreases in
infectious diseases. And the bulk of the decline in infectious disease deaths
occurred prior to the age of antibiotics. Less than 4 per cent of the total
improvement in life expectancy since 1700s can be credited to twentieth-
century advances in medical care.”

― Laurie Garrett, Betrayal of Trust: The Collapse of Global Public Health

Intensive methods have worked in some areas. Sanitation, clean water, waste
disposal, nutrition, vaccinations, hazard and toxin removal, and general
preventive care -- all the nonsexy stuff, matter far more.

------
hiou
Young people in developed nations are the next wave to get hammered by
globalization. The capital markets aggressive search for efficiency will leave
no developed world worker unscathed until they are all at parity with
developing nations. But if it's any consolation they aren't the only ones. The
only difference is that most of the baby boomers made it into the asset class
before globalization was in full swing.

~~~
nyolfen
the appropriate response for ordinary americans seems to be democratic
isolationism, imo. oppose trade deals like ttip, tpp and tpa -- these deals
serve to enrich those who are already the global winners and provide nothing
for the emerging intelligentsia of the first world. globalism might benefit
those in power at the moment, but it provides nothing for those of us who need
to work through a career or two to be comfortable. i may be poor, but i have
far more in common with a poor texan than a rich chinese man.

~~~
arca_vorago
Which is something I've been ranting about this very thing for years, often to
much undeserved derision in my opinion. You touch the point but don't nail it
down. You need to identify exactly what you have in common with the Texan vs
the Chinese man.

I would argue this is the beauty of the true American exceptionality, in that
the American Revolution, despite the British propoganda attempting to paint it
as hardly more than a momentary lapse in military judgement, truly was the
unique act in history of an imperfect overthrow of monarchy for individualism.

In politics I always see a thing that divides the people, but the American
principles we are fighting for are about unity under the common societal
belief structure that each man is his own King. Immigrants swear alligience,
and military take oaths, not to the queen or king, but to the Constitution.
The Supreme law of the land, constructed to protect the rights established
naturally upon all men. Not to establish any right, but to protect them all.

I want the rest of the world to be granted inspiration of our constitution,
but we need to stop doing it by military might, and do it by example instead.

~~~
ionised
Are you serious?

The US was founded by wealthy land owners because they preferred to keep their
money rather than pay taxes to the British Empire.

I sympathise with that but lets not pretend it was founded with the freedoms
and protections of ALL people in mind. Slaves and women were not granted those
rights.

The country was founded by oligarchs for oligarchs and it has remained that
way.

~~~
nikdaheratik
I think that's a bit harsh when you consider that they could have just set up
another monarchy and made themselves the newest round of nobility or
something. It was a cutting edge experiment in liberty at the time.

You have a point about the government being set up to serve the wealthy and
propertied, but that's likely true no matter which time period you live in.

------
WalterBright
Might want to consider the increasing drain on the economy that the government
takes.

[http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/spending_chart_1900_2020...](http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/spending_chart_1900_2020USp_XXs2li111mcn_F0t_US_Total_Government_Spending)

One way or another, it comes out of our pocketses.

~~~
badsock
Do you have any evidence that increased government spending harms economic
growth? It seems like an a priori certainty in right wing thought, but what
evidence I've seen suggests that the effect is minimal or even beneficial
(within the spending ranges that we see in modern developed nations).

~~~
jolux
You're entirely right, government spending does not harm economic growth.

~~~
CountSessine
Not to champion austerity (and no, I'm really not championing austerity), but
if increased spending is paid for with increased borrowing, government bonds
will complete in capital markets and make borrowing generally more expensive
for everyone.

Of course right now capital is ridiculously cheap and the economy still isn't
doing very well...

~~~
vacri
And government projects improve people's ability to work, whether it's by
education or welfare, or negotiating trade treaties, or protecting trade
routes (military).

For example, the US gets immense economic benefits from it's oversized
military, being able to lean on people to give it favourable terms - something
to remember for the people who want to 'stop being world cop' (a self-imposed
role, taken to improve it's economic power).

------
and_so_on
Meanwhile, 40-year-olds (firmly members of generation x) are committing
suicides[1] in record numbers (males in particular), and 10 years from now the
same will be said about millennials having it easier as compared to their
younger counterparts.

[1] [http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/22/health/us-suicide-rate-
sur...](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/22/health/us-suicide-rate-surges-
to-a-30-year-high.html)

------
pmiller2
OTOH, Gen X might earn more than their parents, but they have less wealth than
their parents did at the same age:
[https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2015-07-10/economic-...](https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2015-07-10/economic-
setbacks-have-hurt-generation-x-more-than-millennials)

(Link from 2015)

~~~
Mao_Zedang
More "money" less buying power.

------
haywirez
There are mitigating strategies that we can use to our advantage. Rejecting
car & home ownership culture, enforcing various frugal lifestyle patterns
(cook and eat home, body weight exercise), cheap travel (couchsurfing/airbnb),
geoarbitraging income can do wonders on a personal level. There are several
changes on the horizon that could cause interesting ripples soon - for
example, what happens when mobile solar power, electric transport, better
batteries and global internet coverage enables entirely new kinds of
productive lifestyles outside of expensive cities?

~~~
imtringued
Home ownership is a great asset if you're using the home yourself. On the
other hand a car is a actually a liability that depreciates over time
requiring inspections in regular intervals, compulsory car insurance and a
parking lot at both the departure location and the destination.

~~~
mifreewil
A home is no different from a car in that it also depreciates, things break,
needs to be maintained, repaired, etc.

The only real difference is that in major populated areas, the land it sits on
tends to be rare and valuable, which allows its value to keep up with or even
exceed the rate of inflation.

~~~
snowwrestler
The biggest advantage of home ownership is the tax break. You can leverage
capital 4:1 (with a 20% down payment) and your capital gains will be tax-free
up to $250,000 per person.

The second biggest advantage is that you can fix your housing costs. Good luck
finding a rental that will have the same monthly payment for 30 years, but
it's not hard to get a 30-year fixed rate mortgage.

~~~
antisthenes
You would be hard pressed to find rentals that have the same monthly payment
even for 2 years, let alone 30.

I remember distinctly in 2008-2009, even as the housing prices were crashing,
our rent went up by $90/month (outpacing inflation by 7%), and that's when we
made the decision to buy a house (the $8000 first time homeowner
credit/subsidy helped also)

------
hkmurakami
>Its research found that some of the pay squeeze was due to under-35s entering
the job market as the recession hit, but it also concluded that generational
pay progress had ground to a halt even before the financial crisis struck in
2007/8.

Interesting. I graduated into the worst of the financial crisis (Lehman
brothers went under the month after I finished my studies), and I remember
reading a lot about the former -- that those graduating into a recession make
less in their lifetimes -- but was unaware of the latter part of this
statement.

------
saosebastiao
When boomers wanted cars, we subsidized cars. When they wanted education, we
subsidized education. When they wanted gas, we subsidized gas. When they
wanted suburbs, we subsidized suburbs. When they wanted to take a loan out of
their retirement, we paid for it out of ours. When they wanted to eat
themselves into oblivion, we paid for their health care. Now that they are
sated, millenials want the same...but the boomers have indebted us and
destroyed our government, and they refuse to make any of the sacrifices that
they decided we would make without asking for our permission.

There is a coming political doomsday in the US, and it will have nothing to do
with left vs right, but rather the haves vs the have nots...and it just so
happens that boomers are the haves and millenials are the have nots. It won't
end pretty.

~~~
Erik816
That broad generalization doesn't fly with my observations. There are plenty
of wealthy (or at least high income) millenials and plenty of poorer baby
boomers.

~~~
collyw
Boomers have done quite well considering.

[https://www.theguardian.com/business/2011/mar/15/babyboomers...](https://www.theguardian.com/business/2011/mar/15/babyboomers-
welfare-politics-tax)

------
zone411
Millennials do value work ethic less than other generations: "Asked who has
the better work ethic, about three-fourths of respondents [edit: Millennials]
said that older people do"
([http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/files/2010/10/millennials-
con...](http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/files/2010/10/millennials-confident-
connected-open-to-change.pdf)). This can be good or bad but either way it
might have some effect on the relative earnings.

~~~
michaelchisari
Isn't that just a measure of perception?

~~~
zone411
It's three-fourths of Millennials themselves who believe that, so it's not
just the perception of other generations.

~~~
michaelchisari
Sure, but is that metric useful? Wouldn't hours worked, vacation taken, etc.
be more useful? And even then, you'd have to adjust for under-employment and
precarity, don't you think?

I just don't see a self-perception survey like this as very useful in
determining the actual working habits of generations.

~~~
zone411
Sure, that would be nice to know, but I haven't seen such data.

Edit: I looked it up and found this "gen X and especially the millennials were
much more likely to say they wanted a job with more vacation – that was more
flexible." ([http://www.apa.org/research/action/speaking-of-
psychology/un...](http://www.apa.org/research/action/speaking-of-
psychology/unlocking-millennials.aspx))

~~~
michaelchisari
That doesn't really help without a baseline. If the boomers averaged _x_ hours
of vacation time, and millennials are average _x /2_, then wanting more
doesn't speak to a lack of work ethic.

~~~
zone411
The researcher states that they compared people in these generations when they
were at the same age, so I would think the absolute values were used.

------
58028641
And people wonder why we want a socialist for president

~~~
marknutter
But if Millennials are earning less money, who will pay for socialism?

~~~
sanderjd
I'm not suggesting that I'm in favor of this, but the idea is that the country
has plenty of wealth, it is just concentrated in older generations who were
able to build it through decades of economic largesse, so, well, that's who
should should be paying for it.

~~~
meritt
And I'm still not clear on how taxing the shit out of everyday working
citizens somehow redistributes the wealth which is already hoarded by the
0.1%.

~~~
aioprisan
Well we could start with some common sense tax reform, like not letting
anything above $112k not be taxable for social security, a system through
which old people are living off the backs of the young and straddling them
with debts for services they will never see themselves - a ponzi scheme

~~~
meritt
Wait are you for increasing the SS cap (which is 118.5k btw) or just
eliminating it entirely?

~~~
aioprisan
I think having no cap on income for SS would make sense and make the system
solvent - so basically, cut a tax only for the wealthy retired folks living
off of backs of young folks, who are not exempt and they will never get there
by subsidizing old folks in exchange for interest payments on private loans in
the 7% range.

~~~
meritt
But the super wealthy -- the ones the Sanders crowd really dislike -- don't
tend to have earned income anyway. They primarily benefit from capital gains
which are entirely exempt from SS and Medicare entirely.

~~~
aioprisan
There's still a huge gap from $112 to having income in long term capital gains
tax. Just because there are more things to do with capital gains tax reform,
doesn't mean we can't have common sense reforms like this one.

------
bunkydoo
I think there's a trade-off, millennials will live a life with more public
conveniences. Internet, social networks, free games, etc. Not my cup of tea,
but as a millennial I think the generational values are generally geared more
to life experiences over money.

~~~
angersock
Eh, but in exchange we lost affordable health care, affordable schooling, and
other things.

~~~
shostack
Don't forget paid off homes and retirement.

------
InclinedPlane
There are three main reasons for this.

One is that wages have stagnated for most jobs since the 1980s. Which has
meant that it's harder to get ahead and easier to fall behind unless you step
into a high paying career early or are lucky enough to climb some business
ladder into high ranks.

Another is that if you look at the employment after the 2008 economic crash
the majority of the impact was on folks under 25. Unemployment shot up, as did
underemployment, and that situation has persisted for the better part of a
decade before recovering at an agonizingly slow pace. Literally millions of
people, most of them millenials, just fell out of the job market, and millions
more were stuck in crappy, underpaying jobs for years. That kind of thing has
a dramatic long term impact on your career development and thus your earnings,
your savings, your personal investment, and so on.

The last is the massive cost increases in housing and education. In
combination with the other two these things have significantly hampered
millenials ability to earn money, to save money, and to build up wealth and
stability via home ownership (which has traditionally been a classic way to do
so for Americans). Millenials can barely afford to live in the cities where
there are jobs and if they don't have a decent-ish job they can't afford to
move to where there are, they can't save, and they can't accrue wealth.

------
gerbilly
My feeling is that we've been giving our wealth away for trinkets.

True wealth sustains life: strong social ties, housing, food and the means of
production.

We've been convinced to trade true wealth away for non-essentials. Fancy
vacations in far away places and 2-3 cruises a year-people used to do that
maybe once in their lives, 50inch flat panels in every second room in the
house, huge houses with fewer kids in them, 64 bit cellphones, fancy kitchens
with wolf stoves and granite counter tops all these things are non-essential.

My parents used to save for years to buy a new car or to buy a new stereo. It
was easy, just write "New car" on an envelope and put cash in it every month,
then 4-5 years later you bought the car cash, no loan. This went even moreso
with luxury items like new TVs and stereos.

The quality of cars and electronics has increased, but the quality of our food
and our social lives has decreased.

Cooking of real food at home must be on the decline. Every time I go to the
grocery store every other person's order consists entirely of boxed processed
food.

Instead of cooking and having dinner with the kids, in our industry, we now
get texts[1] on our fancy cellphones at 7:00 pm to fight a fire in production
because no software company wants to properly plan anything anymore[2] and
then we feel awesome about solving the problem we created by being
disorganized scatterbrains.

My suggestion, buy as many of the essentials of life in cash. The rest that
you have to borrow for; pay it off quickly. Invest in long term investments
and start early. Be frugal and forget about the fancy new doodad, or if you
insist save up for it an pay for it cash. Cook at home and spend time with you
kids and your friends.

[1] A text, god forbid not a human voice! People are addicted to texting
because it allows them to have conversations with multiple people at once. We
communicate more than ever but those conversations are shallower.

[2] Fail fast + short term methodologies.

~~~
antisthenes
> My feeling is that we've been giving our wealth away for trinkets.

If you want a great example of this, look at post-USSR Russia and what happens
when you trade wealth for trinkets.

Massive regional concentrations of wealth, hopeless money-losing industries
that are technologically behind by 25-30 years, massive brain drain,
absolutely stagnated sciences, rising nationalism and censorship of the press.

But hey, at least gas is semi-cheap and everybody has cars and iphones.

------
thegayngler
This is the result of it pays to invest. It doesn't pay to work. This benefits
the older generations who have more stored up wealth than younger people so
they can live in the best spots and do nice things while saving money.

------
Mao_Zedang
Decreases in female fertility rates all over the world will only make this
worse (Peak Population). Most industries will settle into global duopolies and
there will be those who own non growth based assets and those that do.

------
RobLach
Probably because they're not just working hard enough amirite?

------
internaut
The Stagnation Hypothesis basically explains all of this.

I would like to remind you that earnings, prices in general are phenomenon
which relate back to the real world in some way. That is to say they must be
side affects of something else.

The cartoon series The Venture Bros symbolizes the Stagnation Hypothesis. If
you don't want to watch the entire series to understand the point, just take a
look at the episode: Season 3 Episode 2: The Doctor Is Sin (the intro even
features Dr T. Venture offering jobs to migrant laborers for which they are
absurdly under qualified and very low wages. This, in light of the frequent
complaints of worker scarcity in the midst of stagnant wages is quite
poignant).

In the series the grandfather (deceased) was able to do all kinds of amazing
innovations, space stations, underwater laboratories, biospheres, rolling
walkways, new fabrics, all kinds of new machines. The next generation
symbolized by Dr T. Venture was unable to compete with all this amazing
success and began to act as a hanger-on, a me-too, acting as if he knew what
was going on but in actuality understanding nearly none of it and therefore
became reliant on sexing up what is really ancient technology to make himself
look good to investors and his own self image. His sons, the next iteration of
Ventures are permanent children, living in a technology wonderland they
effectively treat as magical surroundings. Not only do they not understand the
technology of their grandfather, but they don't understand there is anything
_to_ understand, despite the fact that as clones they are actually
technological artifacts themselves.

Unfortunately this supposed comedy show is a reasonable interpretation of the
last few generations.

If you exclude computation (electronics/robots/AI/internet) then there just
aren't very many parts of the economy that are genuinely growing. This has
been going on since the early 70s.

This has been obfuscated by the accounting of the economy.

The government and central banks have an incentive to produce numbers that
sound rosy because they noticed long ago that if the people in the economy
felt like things were going well, that they were more likely to spend, invest
and work. There is a self fulfilling prophesy nature to it all.

The source of wealth or 'more stuff' is the ability to produce more stuff for
less cost. Lower the inputs, up the outputs. Technology is a key element in
making that happen.

The problem is that (ex-computation) new innovations are far less likely to
affect the average person. Name a single invention outside computers of the
last several decades. I do not mean a hypothetical abstraction in a laboratory
somewhere.

When people find themselves coming up with close to nothing they resort to
saying: well, maybe new innovation is bound up inside classical things we have
but cannot see inside of (we are at the Dr T. Venture stage here).

It is certainly true that minor improvements accumulate into a quality of
their own over time. That is Toyota's business model. The insides of the cars
experience consistent iterative improvement. There are similar analogs in
other industries.

But. And this is the key point. That utterly fails to explain why new
innovations aren't reaching the common person. If we really were experiencing
a boom in innovation and invention we would expect to see thousands of new
fields and sub-fields opening up. What new materials technology do you have
inside your home that did not exist in 1970? What forms of transport? There
are literally dozens of major areas that have not seen any major innovation
and they have stopped being labeled 'technology' as a result.

With any technology there exists diminishing returns. Even in computation as
Moore's Law attests to.

The real mark of true innovation and invention is the new thing associated
with the typical household. For example; suppose the manufacture of aerogel
could be brought down by 2 orders of magnitude.

This would be a leap that would revolutionize everything insulation related.
Household energy bills could probably be 1/10 of what they are today. And due
to the thinness of the fabric and the money it would save, it would get rolled
out very quickly indeed.

~~~
lordCarbonFiber
That is, to put it most softly, a load of bullshit. The cutting edge of
science and technology is every bit as innovative, hell perhaps more
innovative than anything happening in the 70s.

I love how every one of your statement is predicated by "excluding computers,
the internet, etc". That's like saying "aside from that whole steam power
thing the industrial revolution was no big deal"

We have rockets that can land autonomously, stunningly high energy density
batteries that have ushered a revolution in portable electronics (go ask your
parents about NiCd batteries and how shit they were),god damn electric planes
at prototype stage, carbon fiber solar panels pushing 35% efficiency, network
of satellites that can pinpoint you on the meter level an connection to said
network so cheap it's a basic addon to consumer hardware, and the the
technology to fab transistors at 14 fucking nanometers (a feat thought to be
impossible in your golden age of innovation).

You mention household energy bills, ignoring the efficiencies gained by vastly
more efficient electronics, better available windows, insulation and = hot
water heating, if you live in Seattle you can now have your energy usage
broken down by device just by an analysis of noise on your input lines so you
can better curb usage.

What do we have in our homes that wasn't around in the 70s. Hmmm, let's think,
flat screen displays, solid state digital storage of high fidelity media,
maybe you're an audiophile and have a nifty set of electrostatic speakers, a
mechanical pencil at your desk, or maybe just a gel pen, LED light bulbs
giving you long lasting pleasant lights at 50x the efficiency of incandescent
and those are just the things that don't rely on a mirco controller to
function. And you have the fucking gall to suggest innovation is slowing down.

The best part about it all, is to the public these innovations come so fast
and hard that it's all "no big deal".

~~~
internaut
> That is, to put it most softly, a load of bullshit.

I would have said the same thing a few years ago. I would have said it was
preposterously stupid. Then I changed my mind when I saw the map must be
fitting the map of some territory other than ours. Keep an open mind if you
can.

Incidentally some version of the Stagnation Hypothesis is believed by Peter
Thiel, Larry Page and Elon Musk. So I am in terrific company. Many of their
projects are motivated by a belief in the Stagnation Hypothesis.

> The cutting edge of science and technology is every bit as innovative, hell
> perhaps more innovative than anything happening in the 70s.

That isn't even true in software development. I don't think that is even
controversial on HN. And now that Moore's Law has almost completed its journey
in hardware it appears that for the first time ever laptops are coming out
that are slower than the previous iteration (I don't have one myself but I
think that's the Macbook Air and due to battery size).

I'm not saying there's no innovation any longer in computer science generally.
The opposite is so. However in the present and near future we're going to be
retrenching a good bit (making FPGAs for routine junk, making algorithms more
efficient since hardware is no longer quite picking up the slack, and lest we
forget, you can't yet parallelize everything just because the capacity exists,
that's a key unsolved problem).

> I love how every one of your statement is predicated by "excluding
> computers, the internet, etc". That's like saying "aside from that whole
> steam power thing the industrial revolution was no big deal"

I do appreciate the significance of computation or I would not be here.

I'm saying it is not enough by itself. Example; can Silicon Valley give us 12%
GDP next year? I don't think so. But historically during the industrial
revolution we did get splendid growth rates like that (and much higher)
because of technological development.

> We have rockets that can land autonomously,

Elon Musk's project. A believer in the Stagnation Hypothesis who did it
precisely _because_ he believes in it. Same goes for his car, energy and
transport projects. He is doing them _because_ nobody else is doing them. Half
a century since the moon landings anyone? Or did we not want those asteroids
mined and moon hotels? Half a century is a long time before we return to the
first stage of space economic development.

I have a chart in my office of the necessary stages to make space economy
prosper, and we're just getting back to 1983 with Elon Musk's reusable rocket
project.

Take a look at it. Google "Integrated Space Plan" by Rockwell International
and Ronald M. Jones.

There _was_ a plan. It was taken deadly seriously. And it did fail.

> stunningly high energy density batteries that have ushered a revolution in
> portable electronics

This does not impress me. Li-ion has already reached diminishing returns.

Battery technology overall is supremely unimpressive despite a century of
people banging away at it.

The one thing that would be really impressive is a secure containment for a
nuclear battery. That would enable a battery life of thousands of years. That
my friend, is impressive.

Also impressive was Velkess's physical house battery using a flexible lasso-
like flywheel. It was for houses and it would give you 15kwh at first
prototype for 6.5k. The impressive part was the expected lifecycle would, if
the prototype had been iterated, of a half century. Naturally they are
bankrupt because nobody in Silicon Valley had the balls to back Bill Grey's
genuinely innovative idea.

So far chemical batteries seem like a bust to me. It's all fancy press
releases and no ultimate results applicable to any market.

That incidentally is the shared characteristic of the majority of so-called
technology you hear about in the media.

Lots of press releases. No available tech. That's because it either does not
work or it is too dangerous. There is astounding little effective technology
reaching market.

> god damn electric planes at prototype stage

Believe it when I see it.

>carbon fiber solar panels pushing 35% efficiency,

I admit that is impressive. It's one of the exceptions to the "ex-compuation
rule".

> network of satellites that can pinpoint you on the meter level an connection
> to said network so cheap it's a basic addon to consumer hardware,

Computation. And old too.

>technology to fab transistors at 14 fucking nanometers (a feat thought to be
impossible in your golden age of innovation).

Computation. We agreed this was the bright oasis in the sand ocean of
stagnation.

> You mention household energy bills, ignoring the efficiencies gained by
> vastly more efficient electronics, better available windows, insulation and
> = hot water heating

First ask yourself why we are investing in insulation when we didn't pre-70s.

It is because even with the recent bottoming out of the oil price, it is still
much higher than the highest point (in real) it was during the OPEC crisis.

Insulation is a thing because high energy prices are a thing.

Great insulation (like the one I mentioned) would be a boon. But as Thiel
says, any growth generated by the computer revolution has basically been
cancelled out by the terrific rise in energy prices.

Secondly, it is true that electronics have improved in efficiency energy
usage-wise. However the consumption rate has overall gone up as their
capacities have expanded. Look at old power supplies and new ones, and this
should be perfectly clear despite the gains you mention.

Electronics aren't important though. The majority electricity cost is heating,
then mechanical, lastly electronic. They've developed more efficient water
heaters and so on but it just doesn't compensate enough for the rise in energy
prices.

Real game changers are things like rolling out Gen-5 nuclear fission stations
or nuclear fusion. There has definitely been a stagnation in this form of
energy production for political reasons. Tell me if you want to see some bleak
charts illustrating the point and I'll find where I put them.

This is not just another technology. It is a keystone technology. The source
of many other potential routes to economic prosperity. The direct route. It's
the same with using genetics in biology to accomplish artificial breeding.
Guess what, they're both defacto banned or literally banned (both are outright
banned in my country) in many places.

You might want to pause and think about that. All is not roses.

> And you have the fucking gall to suggest innovation is slowing down.

Ex-Computation. I have the gall because it is a reasonable conclusion to
reach. It's just not emphasized by the media, companies or governments because
it is not sexy and would be considered unhelpful. Nevertheless, it is there.
The Stagnation that is.

That's why wages haven't risen for decades. Enjoy your delightful LED lamp and
the ability to change the hue of your lights.

> The best part about it all, is to the public these innovations come so fast
> and hard that it's all "no big deal".

I think you're going to change your mind on this. Try reading newsprint from
the previous few decades. Same crap different decade. Somehow the innovations
(ex-computation and a very small number of bright spots like solar/fracking)
don't quite seem to reach the public. In most cases it is because they do not
exist. They don't exist in university labs. They don't exist in company labs.
Ignore the press releases and look for evidence of substance.

Here's an interesting titbit. Have you heard of Eroom's law? Despite the
exponentially declining costs in genome sequencing and x-ray crystallography
(their major tools) there exists exponentially declining effectiveness in
coming up with new working drugs.

I repeat: exponentially declining effectiveness. And we can't even digitize
medical records properly to date albeit that's political again.

I'd tell you more weird facts you'd hardly believe that are true but I think
you've had enough for today.

------
marknutter
Isn't it also true that Millenials put less value on financial success and
more value on fulfillment and life experiences than did previous generations?
Could it be that Millenials are "set to earn less" because they are actually
_fine_ with earning less?

Perhaps they watched their Baby Boomer parents chase after money and
accumulate stuff and end up unhappy anyways and decided that they would pursue
other more rewarding aspects of life.

~~~
aioprisan
> Isn't it also true that Millenials put less value on financial success and
> more value on fulfillment and life experiences

Where did you get that from? Maybe that's all that's left when no financial
success can be had, and they're trying to make do with the lemons.

------
quadrangle
Should be "get paid less". We really need to end the framing of whatever
people are paid as assuming that it's equal to what they earn (as in what they
actually deserve given actual work value etc)

~~~
pasquinelli
What someone gets paid has to be, overall, less than what they earn, overall.
Otherwise it'd be uneconomical for their employer.

~~~
dropit_sphere
Not sure what you mean by "overall," but isn't this trivially contradicted?

Salesman A sells $100 of product @ 40% margin, bringing in $40 of "profit,"
and is paid $20.

Salesman B sells $100 of product @ 40% margin, bringing in $40 of "profit,"
and is paid $41.

The owner is up $20 from Salesman A, and down $1 from Salesman B, and can
merrily continue overpaying Salesman B.

"But no owner would do that because it's obvious that this is ridiculous."
Certainly. But replace "Salesman A" with "QA Lead," and "Salesman B" with
"Director of HR," and who knows who's contributing how much?

~~~
dredmorbius
In theory: marginal productivity of labour.

E.g., you start adding and/or cutting sales, QA, and director positions and
see how the organisational performance responds.

You'll also typically find (unless, say, you're a Google, Apple, Intel, and
Cisco colluding with illegal mutual noncompete agreements on labour) that
you're taking prices from the market on what people demand to be paid.

In practice, the information's far less clear, and rules of thumb or gut feels
get invoked a fair bit.

But overall, yes: companies which are aiming for profitability have to balance
their costs, including labour, with revenues.

------
guelo
(UK)

------
bricss
It's not fair.

