
Data and graphs showing millenials' bad economic odds - tekdude
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/05/27/millennial-recession-covid/
======
netsectoday
Reading this article as a millennial really hits home as I remember entering
the workforce as a teenager mid 2001 as soon as I could drive (months before
9/11), re-entering the workforce as a young adult early 2008 as soon as I had
a degree (months before the great recession), then building a company as an
adult for two years and launching it January 2020 (months before the end of
the world).

There have been no breaks. Nothing has been easy. I don't really know what
true success looks like... I struggle and by the skin of my teeth (and now my
family's teeth) and the hits just keep coming. We have a house, but I
literally fought for it with every ounce of effort I had and got extremely
lucky.

This is our version of success; we enjoy rays of sunshine from the eyes of
hurricanes.

~~~
voisin
Fellow millennial at apparently the same age. I agree with your sentiment. I
remind myself that what goes around comes around. Boomers and GenXers bid
housing prices up to absurd levels and stayed working longer than past
generations (mainly because they failed to save when they could have and have
to service debt that is unheard of in past generations). Eventually these
assets will be poured back into the market and it will be a buyer’s market.
Eventually they will retire and upper ranks will be ours for the taking. They
won’t live forever - that wealth will disperse. Our best times are ahead.
Theirs are behind. Stay strong and don’t play their game by overleveraging.

~~~
fxtentacle
Sadly, the owning class could just transfer their housing assets into a
corporation which will rent it out in perpetuity and pay the profits to their
heirs. As such, there's no guarantee that the housing market recovers when the
current house owners die.

~~~
game_the0ry
Partially true.

This did happen more or less during the great recession - private equity
companies (ie colony capital, blackstone, etc) raised specific funds and
created corps to buy foreclosed housing and rented them out.

However, typically they will want to realize a liquidity event (sale) which is
why sometimes those homes were rent-to-own. Since the market picked back
(thanks to the fed for buying trillions in mortgage backed securities), they
were able to sell in a good market. So usually want to sell your investment at
some point to realize some capital gains, not hold forever.

Two opposing forces (outside of supply / demand) will drive pricing:

> how much the fed buys in mortgage backed securities

> the economy being strong enough to raise real wages of home buyers so they
> can buy expensive homes

Given that the fed bought assets so aggressively in such a short period of
time (raising its balance sheet from ~$4.5T to $7T in H1 of 2020) in response
to covid [1], my bet is that housing prices will not come down as long as the
fed is run by boomers (they can't afford to have their net worth go down bc
they are also economically fragile).

[1]
[https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/bst_recenttren...](https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/bst_recenttrends.htm)

------
rdiddly
I graduated into the early 90s recession. It shaped my outlook in various
ways. Took about 10 years to finally get into a respectable job, and then 9/11
killed that. Another half-decade of underperformance, another tenuous success,
then 2008 killed that. Another 10 years to finally get out of debt and start
to get a foothold, and now this. Still don't own a home, although that's
partly by choice. So I sympathize on the one hand, and yet, for n recessions
millennials have been through, I've been through n + 1, so the talk about how
uniquely screwed they are rubs me the wrong way a little bit.

~~~
game_the0ry
True - timing is more relevant than when you were born.

The more relevant discussion is wealth inequality in general across
generations. Plenty of broke boomers too.

------
bronzeage
Debt and overleverage is stealing from the future. We got into 2020 with
nearly every corporate in america deep into debt which used to finance
buybacks.

The last 3 years of profit and growth were stolen from the future by the CEOs
and past shareholders of these companies, and now the Fed is bailing them out
by encouraging even more debt and leverage during coronavirus crisis.

~~~
voisin
The problem starts with government. No one in leadership among any of the
parties has shown any real concern for debt and have been loading up one debt
for decades. The only politically acceptable solution to that debt is to
slowly inflate it away. Any other solution will be divisive. So the government
loads up on debt and inflates it away, keeping interest rates lower for longer
than they should. Then it filters down to corporations and individuals.
Interest rates are low and debt requirements are lax, and if you aren’t
willing to take on debt, you will be outbid by someone who is.

I expect deflation in the near term, and tremendous inflation in the long
term.

------
api
I am so nostalgic for the 1990s.

I am a young Xer, almost an old millennial, kind of on the cusp. I've wondered
if this is a cognitive artifact of my age in the 90s, teens to 20, but I have
asked older and even a few younger people and many have also expressed
nostalgia for that decade. Boomers and much older Xers often agree.

My teens were rough anyway. It was not my personal best decade, but I would go
back in a second... not necessarily literally but definitely to the zeitgeist.

I find myself unable to describe the optimism of that time to people who were
not of age during it. The best I can do is encourage people to watch some old
Star Trek TNG. You couldn't even write that today. Dark edgy music and culture
was in, but that was an artifact of the optimism. Nobody wants a Nine Inch
Nails or early Tool now because the world is darker than the music. Pretty
Hate Machine would be journalism, not harmless cathartic emotional escape and
fantasy.

For my money the optimism ended decisively on 9/11\. The shift was incredibly
deep and profound. We have never recovered, though a rally was attempted in
the late oughts. That rally crashed into resentment driven identity politics;
the alt-right and its fellow travelers or "cancel culture" on the other side.
Superficial optimism doesn't stick and won't until we get past 9/11 and all it
seemed to mean. The terrorists won.

~~~
game_the0ry
Re: 9/11

You and I are in agreement - that day set the tone for America's future in:

* economics - on his way back to the fed reserve in NYC via helicopter in autumn 2001, Greenspan saw the rubble of WTC and decided to drop the fed funds rate, and it eventually hit 1% in 2004, which is why asset prices (real estate, stocks, bonds) are so high today and why we had a housing boom during that time (2004-2008)

* international policy - never ending war on "terror" (not that they decided on "terror" bc when you have a war on a country, you can define the end of the war; a war on "terror" can go on forever bc you can redefine "terror")

* culture / politics - democrat vs republican (and media fed into it bc it culture wars drive ratings)

Yeah...looks like al qaeda did more damage than we thought.

~~~
msamwald
Non-American here. I think 9/11 has global significance that goes beyond its
impact on the US. It destroyed the narrative that liberal democracy, free
markets and technology had removed all obstacles that would keep us from
converging towards a peaceful, secular and progressive global society.

~~~
api
I think it started the collapse of that narrative. The failure of the Arab
Spring and the rise of Xi Jinpeng did the rest.

------
cgshep
This thread resonates a lot having graduated in 2013. I've worked for several
years in three major European cities — London, Cambridge and Brussels — on
above average salaries as a data scientist in the financial sector. I'm also a
former Samsung employee; I received a good hand from life's lottery.

Yet, a modest family home is out of my reach once childcare and other bills
are considered. This is in sharp contrast to my parents who school without
degrees, bought a 3-bedroom house in their early 20s and who are now both
retired.

What went wrong?

------
ghiculescu
It's interesting the Lost generation, 100 years ago, fairs the next worse, and
most similarly to millennials.

I re-read The Sun Also Rises[1] yesterday. You could change the names and it'd
be the story of plenty of people I know today. History repeats itself.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sun_Also_Rises](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sun_Also_Rises)
\- if you haven't read it, it's the best book.

~~~
voisin
A Moveable Feast is another good one from Hemingway with themes that strike me
as oddly similar the millennial generation.

Just hoping I can’t say the same thing about Steinbeck’s books in the next few
years.

------
supernova87a
Well, it's hard to compete with the generation that grew up in post-war and
full growth economy, fueled by huge technology gains and a country open to
expansion. It was like all you had to do to have a good life was... be alive.

Things get less giddy and boundless (for people on the whole) when a country
reaches middle age and there's not new jobs just for the asking. When people
reminisce about "how resilient and capable we were back then", just remember
that nothing hurts too bad when you've got a free ride on an elevator to the
top floor.

And now consider southern Europe where it's our situation and wages are 1/2
what we have (though with more social services to take up the slack).

------
collective-intl
I actually don't think the data and graphs prove their point.

Millenials are young and so the appropriate comparison has to be to to other
generations when they were the same age.

You can throw out half their graphs based in that point.

The remaining ones are cherry-picked to be misleading.

Growth in the overall economy, while good, does not indicate the absolute
level of success. Would you have rather grown up in India where there's been
much higher growth in the last few decades?

In general, real wages have only grown over time. Today, we benefit from all
the growth of previous generations.

Median household income is not flat, but up steadily every decade. Yes, on the
high end, it has grown even more (because a smart person can contribute more
than in the past b/c less manual work, information tech).

But what no one says is that wages are up for lower incomes as well.

And, the safety net is bigger: government transfers for unemployment, food
stamps, child tax credits, etc are WAY up compared to previous generations.
Boomers barely got a dime.

Before the pandemic, the economy was absolutely the best it's ever been by a
long shot. Why didn't they show an actual comparison of employment rates?
Millennials would be dominating.

Millennials also dominate on education. Our lives are so much richer because
we've more likely gone to college and can access so much information from our
smart phones.

In the same way that news is mostly all the bad things happening around the
world (another shooting, another disaster), journalism and politics is often
about all things gone wrong in our society.

Consequently, nearly everything you read and hear about current times is
exaggerated in a negative way. (Often for the good purpose of trying to
improve it.)

This article is a perfect example.

Try to stay skeptical when everyone is saying our world is regressing to
poverty and nastiness.

Because the truth is we have a vibrant and beautiful society that's damn near
the best it's ever been. And the future holds even more promise.

\-- A young millenial

------
sukilot
This thread has quite a few people looking into rose tinted mirrors and
forgetting that the US Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War and oil
crisis and the computer/internet (!) revolution happened.

All the people saying riffs of "OK, Boomer" should go visit BLM protest and
ask people there how envious they are of their grandparents.

~~~
voisin
I think many white people would say they are envious of the opportunities that
their parents and grandparents had laid at their feet. I think many non-white
people would say the opposite. I think this is the crux of the issues - they
persist across generations.

------
game_the0ry
I made this comment on a thread about people having fewer babies nowadays, and
I think its relevant here:

Millenial here, born in mid-80s. Have seen or experienced: > dot-com boom /
bust (junior high)

> 9/11 (high school)

> War on Terror (college)

> student loans (probably for the rest of my life)

> the worst recession since the Great Depression, and the lasting economic /
> career effects that never goes away when you go through that (right when I
> graduated college)

> the divisive culture wars between old / young, rich / poor, establishment /
> anti-establishment, etc

> Trump as president

> Covid-19

> narcissistic boomer parents

> narcissistic boomers in all levels and areas of institutional leadership
> whose baseline modus operandi is incompetence, corruption, and greed

> and a lot more that stresses me out

From my perspective, the world is back-sliding - everything feels like its
getting worse, not better. Economic data backs this - real wages are level
while cost of living is increasing.

And you wonder why we are putting have having children? It's because we do not
know what economic optimism and financial security feel like.

 __ __

Edit - the last 20 years notwithstanding, maybe there is still some things to
be optimistic about:

> people are waking up (just look at the comments in this thread)

> mainstream media is finally talking about this

> if you are reading this, you have access to some kind of computing device,
> which means you're richer than most in the world

All in all, what really sucks is we our standard of living won't be as
comfortable as when we were kids, and the same will probably be true for our
kids.

------
elhudy
I question whether these generational comparisons are using the right
statistics. In the very least they don't seem to paint a complete picture.

Maybe I am biased because I'm a very successful millennial. I have the world
at my hands. Access to written knowledge from any point in the history of
time. Tens of thousands of video games and movies available for under $10
and/or a small subscription price. I can learn the arts, pick up any hobby, or
even teach myself to code for free. I can fly around the world and stay in
hostels in other countries at the same price (or cheaper than) I pay rent in
the US. If I run out of tp it is delivered to my doorstep the next day.

Sure, I make a lot of money and still can hardly afford a house. I graduated
with more student loan debt than both my parents combined. They had different
experiences in those regards. But I wouldn't trade my life in this millennial
generation, for a life in the boomer generation, for anything.

~~~
maxerickson
There's ~0 reason for housing to get more expensive over time in countries
where land is not scarce. It's an abject policy failure.

~~~
ghaff
There's plenty of inexpensive housing out in the not scarce land. It's just
that a lot of people (for various reasons) want to jam themselves onto islands
and peninsulas where land _is_ scarce.

~~~
maxerickson
Tokyo manages to have a huge population and low housing prices. It's not just
the scarcity.

It's also the case that public policy can impact which areas are desirable,
and whether more areas can be made desirable (for instance, by building usable
mass transit).

------
4636760295
Yeah, this makes sense. I got it especially bad, since I joined startups that
raised a huge amount of money on promises of riches, and then failed after
burning through hundreds of millions of dollars. The founders cashed out
before the companies imploded, but regular employees were left holding the
bag. I have lots of illiquid startup stock that's now worthless, after about
10 years in Silicon Valley.

I do feel like the cards are stacked against everyone who isn't already rich.
The system is designed to help keep the rich people rich, and make sure the
poor stay poor.

I'm excited about the uprising, because we might finally be seeing a period of
time that brings about real change. I'd love to see politicians abolished and
replaced with real direct digital democracy. Politicians are a leftover from
the colonial era when government representatives were necessary because it
wasn't possible to have real democracy.

~~~
ghiculescu
If you were fortunate enough to get multiple jobs in Silicon Valley - even if
they didn’t go as well as they could have - it’s hard to honestly claim the
cards are stacked against you. Most people drew a much weaker hand.

~~~
4636760295
That's fair, I am well aware of my luck in this case. I guess I just wish that
someone had explained to me the real value of SV lottery tickets when I was
younger.

FWIW I grew up poor, and am certainly not wealthy now (I'm still a wage
slave), but at least I can afford to buy food and new clothes. Growing up I
had to rely on charity.

~~~
ghiculescu
Congratulations (seriously) on making it, then. I only called your comment out
because I think many people in the HB bubble have very inflated standards
about a “good” life.

