
Millennials Didn’t Kill the Economy. The Economy Killed Millennials - paulpauper
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/12/stop-blaming-millennials-killing-economy/577408/
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rademacher
I think this is really the tale of two Millennials and is a phenomenon that
actually effects all generations currently. There is a concentration of wealth
in this country and the wage increases in the bottom 90% have not kept up with
the cost of goods limiting the purchasing power of this group. This issue is
exacerbated by the increasing costs of goods and education leading to higher
levels of debt for Millennials.

Anecdotal evidence shows that a lot of new grads with technical degrees are
getting offers around $200k in the bay area and seattle (these are the other
Millennials). By 5 years they're making more than many boomers did over a very
successful 30+ year career. Clearly this is only a small subset of
Millennials, but it is an example of concentration. I'm not sure whether this
discrepancy between "classes" of new grads existed previously, does anyone
have insight?

~~~
kepler
$200k if you add to this year-end taxes, cost of living, you can barely finish
the month.

~~~
ivalm
$200k as a solo person without kids gets you a fine life even in bay area. If
you are a couple making $400k, you can even have kids and still be all right.

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intrasight
I think it works both ways. My Millennial daughter and her friends looks at
their parents lifestyle and say "not interested". Not interested in a big
house in the boonies filled with stuff you don't want and don't need. They
seem to want experiences rather than stuff. That's having a positive effect on
the service economy and a negative effect on the stuff economy.

~~~
Loughla
I'm fascinated by this, because I see it as well.

I'm fascinated because when did owning a home with a family become 'not' an
experience? Legitimately confused by this.

I have a house in a rural area (because of where I work) with a wife, kid,
cat, and dog. Most of my friends are just aghast that I would choose to
'settle down' because I won't get any experiences at all. I mean, I'm not
dead. . .

I don't get it.

~~~
juyz
Buying a house and settling down with your wife, kids and dogs is a death
sentence. It literally means "I will [most likely] die here". Something to
avoid.

~~~
Loughla
That's the attitude I don't understand. Can you flush that out a little more?

It's like you only see point A and point Z. There are so many experiences to
be had with a family that fills the middle.

I would argue that moving around constantly to travel keeps you from
developing real, long-term relationships, and that those relationships are
vital to being a successful, fully-realized human. Further, I would argue that
while you may see some neat things, it is a death sentence to die alone.

See how ridiculous that sounds? Same thing with a family and house framed as a
death sentence. It's not a lack of experiences to settle down, it's a
different set of experiences. Why the values judgments?

~~~
intrasight
You can enjoy the freedom to move around and still make lasting, deep
relationships. In fact it's possible that you will have more relationships
with a more diverse set of people. I've heard settling down in a house
described as "building one's coffin". Many people die alone in the coffin they
build.

------
ergothus
First, we get articles blaming Millennials for things.

Then, as people start to push back (prior to this article), we have off-hand
mentions that every generation blames the younger/older generation.

But is this really equivalent? My (limited) understanding is that the Boomers
were themselves quite exceptional - we're in the longest era of global-level
peace, the Boomers themselves WERE a "boom" of population, the extended middle
class of the 50s was an anomaly, etc. Add to this that Millennials face new
issues in ways that other generations haven't: climate change is literally a
sea-level change, education is more costly, communication is more global, and
of course, for the US and many other countries, the next generation that will
support them is much smaller rather than larger. Certainly there are parallels
to previous generational conflicts, but I don't see a reason to shrug this off
as just normal.

I'm GenX, and the articles when I was hitting the workforce were dismissive
and condescending, but in a "aw, they're young and naive" as opposed to "they
are failures as human beings" that I read in a lot of the Millennial coverage.

Does anyone know of studies into whether this IS just normal inter-
generational gripes?

~~~
WorldMaker
The whole generations thing was made up by the Boomers in ad agencies trying
to sell more products through demographic targeting. Just as many other
Boomers were fascinated by astrology/horoscopes and "Ages", they latched on to
a lot of weird pseudo-science that stuck and says a lot more about them
anything else.

They venerated their parents and placed them on a pedestal "The Greatest
Generation". They hated a lot of their earliest kids, "GenX". They doted and
spoiled their later kids and early grandkids, "Millennial", then decided it
was fun to blame them for how much they were doted upon/spoiled.

Boomers aren't even that special in that way that they've named themselves the
"Baby Boomers", sure they were a massive population boom following a couple
huge wars, but demographically speaking they mostly just put the planet back
into the usual Malthusian cycle. There are more GenX and Millennials than Baby
Boomers, because human birthrates trend towards the exponential. The Boomers
aren't some big peak in the graph of human birthrates versus deathrates, they
are a rise back towards "normalcy" after a giant trough.

The next generations that _are_ supporting the Baby Boomers as they head into
retirement and senescence aren't much "smaller", they are just less equipped,
due to erosions in social contracts that the Boomers inherited, and overall a
larger trend back towards greed than their parents. (In those cases, they are
largely right that their parents were better them in general.)

(Also, the Boomers have been aware of climate change since the 70s. Yet
another thing they've left to their kids and grandkids rather than tackle
themselves.)

~~~
adwn
> _The whole generations thing was made up by the Boomers in ad agencies
> trying to sell more products through demographic targeting. Just as many
> other Boomers were fascinated by astrology /horoscopes and "Ages", they
> latched on to a lot of weird pseudo-science that stuck and says a lot more
> about them anything else._

And yet you're making copious use of those labels and assign traits and
actions to the subsets of people labeled thus. So what is it now – made-up or
real?

~~~
WorldMaker
Still made up. Broad swath generalizations remain broad swath generalizations.
I can't claim to great satire in the writing above, but certainly there is an
intentional frisson of irony.

------
tvanantwerp
It always seemed odd to me that non-millennials would look at millennials
buying less and assume strange preferences rather than empty pockets.

~~~
michaelt
I suspect when you're a journalist it's easy to take a biased sample and
getting an unrepresentative result because of it.

I can ask my buddies who don't have cars why they don't have cars, and none of
them will say it's empty pockets. Because my car-less buddies are a biased
sample, software developer cyclists in central London.

~~~
Loughla
You nailed it. NPR did a story about the class division among journalists this
year, or late last year. Folks from lower-socioeconomic classes have a more
difficult time getting into journalism, because of the low-wage barrier early
in their careers.

So we have a class of journalists from upper-middle to upper classes. They
select their experiences and their 'circles' as the experiences, and here we
are.

I have no data, but I'm 100% certain that if you interview individuals with
enough wealth/education/privilege to be in the same social circles as the
major journalists for major organizations, your experiences aren't the
standard US citizen experiences.

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makerofspoons
The economy is going to kill every generation from here on out. It is
estimated that climate change will knock off 10% of the US GDP by the end of
the century: [https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/23/climate/us-climate-
report...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/23/climate/us-climate-report.html)

How do we go about changing societal expectations to stop expecting perpetual
growth? People aren't going to be happy it is no longer a given their children
will do better than themselves, or even that they will be capable of taking
care of them in their old age due to resource and economic crunches.

~~~
anarchimedes
I'm all for taking action against climate change, but the 10% number is just
pure fear mongering. Robert Rhode at Berkely did an excellent job of showing
what the true risks are here:

[https://twitter.com/RARohde/status/1067375440661307393](https://twitter.com/RARohde/status/1067375440661307393)

As politicized as this climate change has become, I would hope to see more
reasoned responses in the future - but given the current environment of
discussion, I won't hold my breath.

~~~
ModernMech
Pure fear mongering is "there's a migrant caravan of MS-13 rapist drug dealers
and ISIS coming from South America with polio and smallpox".

The 10% number according to the twitter feed you linked is characterized as
"unlikely and many things would have to go wrong to get there"

I'm sorry, but in a world that elected Donald Trump, "unlikely and many things
would have to go wrong" is a cold comfort.

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drpgq
In 1995, Americans over 55 bought about one-third of all new cars. Today
they’re buying almost two-thirds.

That's an interesting stat.

~~~
baybal2
Car is a giant money sink...

Life in a city with public transport is simply better. You have 2 choices in
almost any big city today: spent time in traffic jams in comfort of your car,
or ride public transit

~~~
intrasight
Where can I find such a city?

~~~
satai
Prague, Vienna, Berlín I guess

~~~
expertentipp
Cycling in Prague?! Good luck. Mostly cities on the North European Plain minus
Poland. Maybe few cities in France and Spain. I get chills on the thought of
cycling in London or in more busy large Italian cities.

~~~
satai
I don't talk about cycling but about public transport.

------
jld
I am interested by society's desire to blame an entire generation's worth of
young people for how they turned out.

Millennials did not ruin the economy in 2008, make a college education cost
hundreds of thousands of dollars, or impose 40 years of wage stagnation in
this country. These kids and young adults are just a product of the
environment that their parents and grandparents built for them.

We should instead talk more about what Gen Xers and Baby Boomers did for the
fortunes of Millennials rather than how insufferable Millennials are.

~~~
mkirklions
>make a college education cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, or impose 40
years of wage stagnation in this country.

Lets see if this exaggeration is upvoted or downvoted by HN whales.

Its a very sympathetic argument, but its not true. Curious how our overlords
respond.

EDIT: Since I cant post, I'll respond here. Someone posted links saying-

> the College Board reports that a moderate college budget for an in-state
> public college for the 2017–2018 academic year averaged $25,290. A moderate
> budget at a private college averaged $50,900.

> college education cost hundreds of thousands of dollars

According to your source, this is 4x cheaper than the (200k+ that OP claimed)

And the wages have gone up, with inflation(from your link). Not sure if you
should blame the government for this, but I don't see anyone in this thread
complaining about Fiat currency policy.

~~~
0d311
Sorry, but this is just... True?

[https://www.collegedata.com/cs/content/content_payarticle_tm...](https://www.collegedata.com/cs/content/content_payarticle_tmpl.jhtml?articleId=10064)

[http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/07/for-most-
us-...](http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/07/for-most-us-workers-
real-wages-have-barely-budged-for-decades/)

------
eaandkw
Two things that come to mind when I read articles like this.

The first one is what do you expect when the Federal Reserve target inflation
rate is 2%. Over a 20, 30, or 40 year time span everything at least doubles in
price.

The second thing that comes to mind is that nowadays everything seems to be a
racket designed to extract as much money from a person as possible. All in the
name of higher stock prices. Look at the number of things that are now
subscription based. Meaning you never actually own anything.

There is another final thing that stuck in my head when reading the article.
Who and how are "success" being defined. Just because someone doesn't own a
house as big if not bigger than their parents does not mean they aren't
successful. Same thing for cars, clothes, etc.

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jeffdavis
I consider myself fairly well-informed, but I just don't understand why it is
considered good for people to own expensive cars.

Are people actually not getting where they need to go, or are they just making
their existing cars last longer?

They are an "engine of the economy", but what does that mean? Is it possible
to have a less wasteful engine of the economy? Can something abstract, like
artwork, ever be an engine of the economy?

What would happen if the economy only produced stuff that we really want?
Would that be bad, and if so, how?

------
rchaud
HN mindset: "I despise clickbait. Misleading, editorialized titles designed to
trigger emotional responses? No thank you!"

Reality: this comments section.

------
pitaj
The government has slowly killed the economy. As decades of accumulating
onerous regulation, heavily distortionary policy, and over-taxation catch up
with our economy.

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HugoDaniel
Why are millennials so associated with being victims ?

~~~
Retric
Because they are the first American generation significantly economically
worse off than their parents.

Even US life expectancy is dropping, as are average IQ’s.

~~~
gnicholas
Is life expectancy dropping because millennials are dying? My understanding is
that it's due largely to the opioid crisis, which mostly affects people in
older generations.

~~~
save_ferris
The opioid crisis isn't limited to older generations, it's definitely
impacting millenials as well[0]. The millenials that are most likely to be
impacted just tend to be from more economically depressed areas.

0: [https://qz.com/1169672/us-millennials-were-almost-20-more-
li...](https://qz.com/1169672/us-millennials-were-almost-20-more-likely-to-
die-in-2016-than-2014/)

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napworth
Yeah, no shit.

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blacksqr
Millennials started getting the vote in 2000. Many crucial elections since
then have been extremely close. They had the opportunity to have the decisive
say in outcomes. How's their track record of choices working out?

~~~
jld
Ha. In 2000, there were about 9 million Americans between 18 and 20 years old,
and about 200 million people older than 20.

Even now, people 20-40 are a minority of the voting populace.

It is unfair to blame the outcome of all the elections, and hence the policies
of the last 20 years, on a minority people eligible to vote.

~~~
blacksqr
Voter turnout by 18-21 year-olds in 2000 was the lowest in recorded history.

The presidential election was decided by less than 600 votes.

