A Socio economic discussion about boomers.

Even the "base model" car now has power steering, power windows, A/C, Radio, and cruise control.

My Dad was 42 before he thought he was well off enough to splurge on a car that had power windows, A/C, and holy cow, an FM radio (all cars before that had AM radios). We pleaded with him order the AM/FM/cassette stereo on that car, but he said nope, too much money. And besides, he said, who pays for music when it's free on the radio?

That's the mindset of an early boomer, very conservative with what they spent.
 
My Dad was 42 before he thought he was well off enough to splurge on a car that had power windows, A/C, and holy cow, an FM radio (all cars before that had AM radios). We pleaded with him order the AM/FM/cassette stereo on that car, but he said nope, too much money. And besides, he said, who pays for music when it's free on the radio?

That's the mindset of an early boomer, very conservative with what they spent.

And none of that touches on the Bluetooth capability in modern cars...
 
More comes down to opportunity than anything else. The "greatest generation" set the pattern in the 70s when they were in political power. Borrow money, which is future consumption spent today. A few key points that have driven the debt that drags on Gen X and later.
1. In the 60s, companies went with defined benefit programs. Effectively many of these programs placed huge economic burdens on the companies, but left out huge swaths of the population once people retired. This led to the growth of Medicare.
2. In the 70s, banks recognized that people had a lot of equity in their homes. They started to push/sell HELOCs hard. This was a new way for consumers to leverage their assets to spend more money now.
3. In the 80s, the federal government got in the game. President Reagan and Speaker Tip O'Neil made a deal to solve the short term debt problems but did not address the structural problems that entitlements represented. If you web search you will find the trustee reports predicting the predicament we are in now.
4. In the 90s, the boomers really came to power. They had learned from their parents generation to kick the can down the road. To fund the entitlements, money needed to come from somewhere. Well, young people do not vote. So, the portion of the school costs for college/university/trade school started to decline while costs were rising.
5. In the 2000s, medical costs continued to be a major drive of cost issues at college/university/trade schools; since by its very nature this is a labor intensive effort. Boomers effectively blocked any attempt to actually reign in medical costs, and forced society to attempt to stay on a defined benefit program for retirees.
6. In the 2010s, the situation stayed the same. We just kept getting deeper in the hole.
7. Now in the 2020s, we are effectively broke, and the future generations are largely screwed.

The point being, as others have said, debt is a drag, and having debt prevents society from presenting opportunities to future generations. And as a generation, boomers learned from their parents on how to screw the future generations, and did an even better job of it.

So, while all this was going on. A few other critical factors were happening to make people feel good, but actually hurt the society:
1. Globalization was occurring. Companies began to chase the lowest cost labor markets. This sucked employment away from the USA; but made lots of material stuff cheap.
2. As part of globalization, the US went from an export driven economy to one powered by consumerism.
3. The pace of technical innovation was increasing. This was raising the required skills for an increasing percentage of the jobs still locally available.
4. One of the results of #3 is more education is required, at the same time social support and spending for additional education was declining. The result, a larger and larger share of the cost of education was moved from the public purse to the individual.
5. WallStreet shifted the focus of many companies away from long term strategies toward the next quarter. The result, is companies have little to no incentive to invest in employees, or loyalty to the employee. So companies no longer want to hire the entry level position and grow/invest in the employee. They want to hire someone already experienced and can hit the ground running.

Those are the ones I am aware of. I am sure there is more. The point is, it is not any one thing, it is the sum total of many factors. Each of which has largely destroyed the ability of future generations to create wealth.

Tim


Good points, but I suspect you can take it back even further than the 60s. FDR's "New Deal" and the alphabet soup programs began the heavy involvement of the federal government in manipulation of the economy and wealth redistribution. Fast forward to today, and much of federal contracting and gov't agencies are a modern WPA for white-collar workers.

As you say, there are many factors. Having a fiat currency is another factor, coupled with excessive faith in MMT.
 
Good points, but I suspect you can take it back even further than the 60s. FDR's "New Deal" and the alphabet soup programs began the heavy involvement of the federal government in manipulation of the economy and wealth redistribution. Fast forward to today, and much of federal contracting and gov't agencies are a modern WPA for white-collar workers.

As you say, there are many factors. Having a fiat currency is another factor, coupled with excessive faith in MMT.

The difference of FDRs New Deal, it was a pay as you go program for entitlements. Other aspects, such as CAA (mass employment program) were all short term funding without long term structural deficits. In the late 40s and 50s; US debt was basically flat. https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/datasets/historical-debt-outstanding/historical-debt-outstanding

Tim
 
Just wait till the boomers start selling off the 401k’s….the market will really be cheap then. ;)
 
This is gonna be a bit ranty, ill-defined, and more about general 'vibes' than specifics but we're talking about generations so that's probably par for the course. I'm also a bit of an odd duck too in many ways so be forewarned.

As I understand the cutoffs I'm technically a Millennial since I was born in the early 80s. I'm gonna use an aviation analogy here. For me, growing up and living in America feels kinda like being invited to a party to build a cool new kit plane- but when I got there it was done and they just wanted to me to wax it for them.

The majority of companies I could work for want me to walk in with credentials proving I'll be competent and reliable. They then want me to be a cog in a well designed machine. They do NOT want me to be innovative, creative, overachieving, or really think for myself beyond filling the very limited role they have laid out. If you think I'm being overly dramatic here they pretty much said this outright in one of my Software Engineering courses in college. "We don't want heroes, we want people who can consistently generate code." I hasten to point out that this is for good reason. Many of those coding superheroes who built the early versions of stuff we use today wrote code that nobody else understood and was poorly documented. That made it hard for others to maintain it or work on it, even worse if that person suddenly became unavailable that could literally sink a company. It makes total sense for an organization to want things this way. For me a human being, I don't want to be a cog at all and after several years of that life I punched out the second I had the opportunity. Most of my peers did not have an option like I did and may never.

The world I live in is so much safer than the America I've read about back in the 40's-70's. We have rules to keep kids from being in any sort of danger, there's a supervising adult for most of their childhood. Almost every product and service you can imagine has some kind of regulatory oversight, product testing, professional certification, or department full of corporate lawyers etc behind it making sure said product or service can't possibly hurt me. My home is built and inspected(theoretically) according to code to make sure I'm safe and depending on jurisdiction there are rules about how it must be kept up. We have rules for every type of occupation to keep workers safe. All of these things were done for very good reasons. Kids have suffered many terrible things in past generations. People used to buy products that hurt/killed them, incompetent practitioners of all sorts of trades used to cause harm/defraud people. Shoddy construction, cheap landlords, and poor safety standards in housing used to cause all sorts of harm to people. Crappy employers used to let their employees get maimed or killed on the job for want of spending a bit for safety. Like I said, all for good reasons.

But back in those decades gone by a guy with some tools and a little bit of knowledge gleaned by watching others/working with his father/etc could maintain his own home without any inspectors. He could go sell his skills without a boss just by demonstrating a bit of ability. Or, someone with some ability in almost ANYTHING could go to a small business and meet the actual owner. An owner who could make judgement calls and take a risk on some guy with no list of credentials to his name. That owner probably built his business comparatively free of certifications, inspections, HR, OSHA, and all the other modern red tape. Sure, you can still start a business now but it's a LOT harder. You have to tick off all the safety and certification boxes which takes a great deal of money and time. Then you have to compete with large corporations who have entire teams of people to deal with each of those regulatory and liability headaches.... on top of having efficiency of scale making it hard for you to be competitive.

The Boomer stereotype is giving struggling young people advice like "pull yourself up by your own bootstraps" or "just walk into the business and shake the Boss's hand". Well, as your generation(and others) matured we eliminated risks, we probably saved lives and people's life savings. A lot of these regulations exist for very good reasons. However, in doing so we cut off many of the best avenues struggling young people used to have to elevate their station in life. Successful businesses have tended to become huge monolithic entities that want cogs and certainly won't take a risk on someone. If you do find the odd small business where you actually manage to get in and shake the owner's hand what are the odds that guy can take the risk of hiring some rando without any credentials based on a first impression?

I know some people reading this are rolling their eyes and thinking stop whining, most people figure it out. And yeah, most people do. Most of my friends in my age group are doing OK but I can't think of many I'd say are really thriving. Being a cog in the machine isn't a very fulfilling way to live. Waiting for your parents to die so you can (hopefully) have an inheritance and (hopefully) finally get out of debt is a pretty depressing aspiration.

The world I feel my generation has been given is one that's more stable and secure than the world I've read about in history. But I'm forced to live in a padded cubicle reading stories of the grand adventures of those who came before and feeling completely helpless to direct my own fate.(Well not me personally but my generation as a whole).

I hope that rant made sense to someone, it was probably better delivered around a campfire after everyone is at least 3 or 4 beers in . Oh well.
 
This is gonna be a bit ranty, ill-defined ...

The majority of companies I could work for want me to walk in with credentials proving I'll be competent and reliable. They then want me to be a cog in a well designed machine. They do NOT want me to be innovative, creative, overachieving, or really think for myself beyond filling the very limited role they have laid out.

Let me tell you about my new job. I have 30 years of experience and a proven method and track record of delivering projects. My new job as a senior manager wants me to leave all that behind to be a cog in a poorly designed machine. They do not want me innovating, being creative or overachieving. Instead, they're demanding I do an "agile" project using user stories and Jira with about 50 required delivery documents. It should have been a warning that 4 senior people in my industry have already come and gone in the past year.

Thats big companies. I've been here for 4 months and making plans to exit for up to 70k less money.

[deletia]

I hope that rant made sense to someone, it was probably better delivered around a campfire after everyone is at least 3 or 4 beers in . Oh well.

I understood the rant, but I don't believe it's true. You've been taught to be timid rather than bold and to let others take care of you rather than providing for yourself. If you want good advice, go to tech school and get a certificate in a trade skill. Then go work for someone reputable for a few years before you strike out on your own. The path to being a millionaire is still to work for yourself and trades are a great way to do it. No matter how much they confuse the rest of it, people will always need electricians and plumbers.

For that matter, there are unskilled trades you could do right now, but be warned that you'll be competing with immigrants. Still, I know some people painting houses making 2k a week. The Navy teaches high school dropouts to paint, it isn't a hard skill.
 
I know many companies nowadays just want conformists even in traditionally innovative roles, but where I work we're desperate for mid career mechanical engineers who can innovate and take charge of a machine design project. All we can find are new graduates who may have potential but no experience and all us old guys are retired or getting ready to and there's nobody to take over.

OTOH, college was way oversold and now costs an absurd amount. Too many kids were sold the "you gotta go to college and get a professional job or you're a failure"... when plumbers are making over $100 per hour. Oh yeah, and we're desperate for good experienced machinists and toolmakers, too.
 
The difference of FDRs New Deal, it was a pay as you go program for entitlements. Other aspects, such as CAA (mass employment program) were all short term funding without long term structural deficits. In the late 40s and 50s; US debt was basically flat. https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/datasets/historical-debt-outstanding/historical-debt-outstanding

Tim

I think you are missing or not acknowleding a critical problem of the "new deal"... because it was "pay as you go" (while creating entitlements), it was unsustainable in the long-term, exasperated by all the expansions.

IBTL
 
Just wait till the boomers start selling off the 401k’s….the market will really be cheap then. ;)
Pretty sure you were joking, but no. Boomers have been selling off 401(k)s for a while now, and will continue to do so. It happens a little bit at a time, and comprises a small part of normal market activity.

The majority of companies I could work for want me to walk in with credentials proving I'll be competent and reliable.
Nothing new here! Even when I was a kid it was the same. That's why there are those other companies where you might make less money for a while but you'll gain experience and credentials.
But back in those decades gone by a guy with some tools and a little bit of knowledge gleaned by watching others/working with his father/etc could maintain his own home without any inspectors. He could go sell his skills without a boss just by demonstrating a bit of ability. Or, someone with some ability in almost ANYTHING could go to a small business and meet the actual owner. An owner who could make judgement calls and take a risk on some guy with no list of credentials to his name. That owner probably built his business comparatively free of certifications, inspections, HR, OSHA, and all the other modern red tape. Sure, you can still start a business now but it's a LOT harder. You have to tick off all the safety and certification boxes which takes a great deal of money and time. Then you have to compete with large corporations who have entire teams of people to deal with each of those regulatory and liability headaches.... on top of having efficiency of scale making it hard for you to be competitive.
It still happens. Just this morning I met a guy who started his own business six years ago, competing with established big businesses including some national chains. He's doing quite well, and they have as much work as they can handle with almost no advertising. Of course just like "back in the day", he did this after working for other places for a number of years to learn his trade and see how the business works. He's probably 40-ish. Yes, there are absolutely more regulations now than there were, but everyone has to deal with them.

The Boomer stereotype is giving struggling young people advice like "pull yourself up by your own bootstraps" or "just walk into the business and shake the Boss's hand". Well, as your generation(and others) matured we eliminated risks, we probably saved lives and people's life savings. A lot of these regulations exist for very good reasons. However, in doing so we cut off many of the best avenues struggling young people used to have to elevate their station in life. Successful businesses have tended to become huge monolithic entities that want cogs and certainly won't take a risk on someone. If you do find the odd small business where you actually manage to get in and shake the owner's hand what are the odds that guy can take the risk of hiring some rando without any credentials based on a first impression?
This has been a real gripe of mine for years now. Used to be you could send a good resume and a great cover letter, then follow up with a phone call or an in person visit, and get a job based on what you can do, not what "qualifications" you have. I did this my entire career. I've been in the IT industry, as we call it now, for over four decades. Never have had the qualifications hiring managers wanted. I still don't have a college degree. When I broke into my first computer job I didn't have any of the training or background they wanted, just a good story and a convincing letter that persuaded someone to take a chance on me.

Well, you pretty much can't do that with large companies any more. If you can't tick the right boxes in their online application process, no one will likely even see your CV. No one will read your cover letter. You can't call anyone on the phone, and if you walk into their office you'll be looked at like you're a terrorist or something. Just don't blame Boomers for that change! HR departments run by much younger crews inflicted that upon us all. There's little I hate more than slogging through applicants coming in via one of those disgusting online application processes (and yet half of them are still totally unqualified but have learned to BS their way through the process).

Smaller businesses are the answer. There are still plenty of smaller companies where you CAN walk in the door and talk to the boss. You'll need to do your homework first, learn about the business, try and figure out who you need to talk to.

The world I feel my generation has been given
Maybe this is the biggest difference. I don't recall ever feeling, or hearing anyone I knew talking about, "the world we'd been given". It was more about the world we wanted to make. And for the record, when my parents died I didn't inherit enough to pay for a nice weekend getaway.

Let me tell you about my new job. I have 30 years of experience and a proven method and track record of delivering projects. My new job as a senior manager wants me to leave all that behind to be a cog in a poorly designed machine. They do not want me innovating, being creative or overachieving. Instead, they're demanding I do an "agile" project using user stories and Jira with about 50 required delivery documents. It should have been a warning that 4 senior people in my industry have already come and gone in the past year.
Please, please don't get me started on Agile. Jira, though, has been a great way to push work I don't really want to do down the stack and just never do it. Pretty sure that wasn't the intent, but I figure if the coders can use all the tools to produce extremely well organized and well documented crap, I can use them my way too.
 
A Socio economic discussion about boomers.
Disclaimer I’m a boomer. But a late one. So right now, boomers are buying stuff and spending money. The southeast and southwest of seeing a flood of baby boomers buying houses, buying boats, buying airplanes. The oldest of the boomers are pushing 80. As time goes by they will not be able to fly those airplanes, run the boats, and will need to move into assisted living or get buried. Currently, my wife and I are helping my pre-boomer father and mother-in-law transition into an assisted living situation.
It made me wonder about how things might unfold in the next 10 to 15 years as the largest generation in history gets to their twilight years. My 24 yr. old daughter is concerned that when she finishes her school and military obligation that she won’t be able to afford a house. I can understand her point of you when in the Raleigh area vinyl boxes in a bean field are going for north of $400,000. But my advice to her was not to worry as a lot of these retired boomers are going to be selling, putting a deflationary pressure on the price of housing. And that being a physician she will always be in the top tier of wage earners.
So what do you all think?
Could not agree more
 
I would love to know the numbers of Millenials who would be happy with living in a 3 bedroom, 1 bathroom house with one basic car, one tv, a landline, going out to eat once or twice a month, and a roadtripping vacation once every couple of years.

I would be the last person to say that the economy is wonderful for us later generations, but it's more than just a bad economy. Lifestyle standards have gone through the roof. What was considered a good life is now considered borderline improvished by many, or least as "just ekeing by".

^^^^ This^^^^^ The gub'ment would like us all to believe that the person flipping burgers is entitled to the same conveniences enjoyed by those who have worked their arses off to have those conveniences. It is thinly disguised in the name of equality. But, I digress.....
 
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This has been a real gripe of mine for years now. Used to be you could send a good resume and a great cover letter, then follow up with a phone call or an in person visit, and get a job based on what you can do, not what "qualifications" you have. I did this my entire career. I've been in the IT industry, as we call it now, for over four decades. Never have had the qualifications hiring managers wanted. I still don't have a college degree. When I broke into my first computer job I didn't have any of the training or background they wanted, just a good story and a convincing letter that persuaded someone to take a chance on me.

That's exactly what they were doing: taking a chance on you. At a large company with many top-notch resumes in the pile, why should I take a chance on someone lacking qualifications when I have many applicants with high grades from places like Purdue, Ga Tech, Clemson, UF, etc., plus internships and demonstrated leadership ability?

Any new hire is a roll of the dice, so I'm going to do anything I can to improve the odds.

When I was hiring engineers for Lockheed, I often had a large stack of resumes and a short period of time to wade through them. Give me 20 resumes to screen in 30 minutes, and you'd better believe I'm not going to waste time. I'm going to take a quick first pass through the stack and toss ones that don't meet my minimums. I'm playing the odds. Not only do I toss the no-degree applicants, if I'm hiring new grads I also toss the ones with GPAs < 3.0. Then I take the remaining ones and screen for relevant job experience, certifications, etc. Then with the remaining small stack I start reading in detail, looking for sweeteners like leadership experience, business training, a broader skill set, etc., and reading cover letters.

By the end of the half hour I'll have culled it down to 4 or 5 that are worth a phone call, and maybe invite 3 for an interview.

That's the reality. Maybe I missed an occasional diamond in the rough, but I hired a lot of great people who have been successful in the company.

There's little I hate more than slogging through applicants coming in via one of those disgusting online application processes (and yet half of them are still totally unqualified but have learned to BS their way through the process).

And that's kinda my point.


Smaller businesses are the answer. There are still plenty of smaller companies where you CAN walk in the door and talk to the boss. You'll need to do your homework first, learn about the business, try and figure out who you need to talk to.

Yes. Smaller number of applicants, typically less competitive hiring, often good opportunities. But there are some disadvantages, too, like small budgets for labs, equipment, training, etc.

Maybe this is the biggest difference. I don't recall ever feeling, or hearing anyone I knew talking about, "the world we'd been given". It was more about the world we wanted to make.

:yeahthat:
 
Interesting; I wondered about the asset distribution of that curve:View attachment 122974
source: https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/dataviz/dfa/compare/chart/

There's a lot of really interesting data on all this stuff, the "whys" are important.
Some interesting points, but it makes it sound like there's only so much wealth that gets distributed.

Actually, yes. There is only so much wealth that gets distributed. The myth of infinite economic growth is more ridiculous than santa claus or the tooth fairy.
 
^^^^ This^^^^^ The gub'ment would like us all to believe that the person flipping burgers is entitled to the same conveniences enjoyed by those who have worked their arses off have those conveniences. It is thinly disguised in the name of equality. But, I digress.....

When I was 17, everyone my age that I knew were leaving home, or getting kicked out. They all had minimum wage jobs, or apprenticeships that effectively paid less than minimum wage. And, they all survived by moving in with multiple roommates. Many didn't own cars and got around by carpooling or hitchhiking.

I looked at my step-brother and his buddies, working at the ship yard and spending all their free time and every cent they could spare on cheap booze and cheaper pot, and decided I wasn't going that way. Unless you had parents that could afford it and good enough grades, college wasn't even an option. So, I joined the Navy. I got married in 1980. I was an E-4 in the Navy and my wife worked full time. We still made so little that we qualified for food stamps. We didn't take them. We lived in a tiny 1 bedroom apartment that was pretty shabby by today's standards.

After I retired from the Navy and started my 2nd career, some of the younger coworkers used to come at me with the "spoiled boomer" crap, and I'd tell them about this. The ones that listened actually told me it didn't sound any different than what they were experiencing, with the exception that some of them were in debt up to their eyeballs because credit is so damn easy to get.

I didn't even get a credit card till after I was married and bought my first house. The interest rate on that first house was 14.5%. And the mortgage payment ate up so much of our take home, that we literally counted pennies in the check out lane at the grocery store.
 
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Actually, yes. There is only so much wealth that gets distributed. The myth of infinite economic growth is more ridiculous than santa claus or the tooth fairy.

What a depressing way to view the world. If it were true, the only way any country, any nation could become wealthy would be by stealing or otherwise taking from others, but that isn't what we see. It is not what we have ever seen.
 
I would love to know the numbers of Millenials who would be happy with living in a 3 bedroom, 1 bathroom house with one basic car, one tv, a landline, going out to eat once or twice a month, and a roadtripping vacation once every couple of years.

I would be the last person to say that the economy is wonderful for us later generations, but it's more than just a bad economy. Lifestyle standards have gone through the roof. What was considered a good life is now considered borderline improvished by many, or least as "just ekeing by".

I know many millennials who would be happy with that life, but it's not an option in most of the country. Many of the 3 bed 1 bath homes have been renovated into 4/3s or demolished and replaced with McMansions. The ones that haven't arrived in places where you can't get a job that pays decently or are in such poor shape that the only way not to lose money while owning them is to renovate them into 4/3s (since you are bidding against companies that do that to buy it).

Because wages have been statistically stagnant for 50 years (while large costs like housing have inflated), you need 2 earners in most households. With the US's non existent public transit infrastructure, that means 2 cars are not a luxury for a 2 earner household.

Because most people who actually have a landline have not priced a new landline in decades, I will spoil it for you. Cell phones are cheaper (often significantly) and offer more value.

And since eating out is the "luxury" that is most commonly thrown into, I will point out that in the 60s, the average American family spent 3x as much (as a percentage of income) on food as the Average American family does today. Many millennials I know view a home cooked meal as more of a luxury than eating out, because with everyone working it's difficult to find time to make a meal at home (that's not something prepackaged from the store), but prepackaged food is often as expensive or more expensive than takeout (next time you are at the store, look at the price of frozen pizza and consider Dominos sells pizzas for $5.99 each)

I am not going to disagree that aspects of our standard of living are better than they were in the past, but a significant part of what has made life unaffordable is that we are forced to accept these "improvements" as necessities.
 
I think you are missing or not acknowleding a critical problem of the "new deal"... because it was "pay as you go" (while creating entitlements), it was unsustainable in the long-term, exasperated by all the expansions.

IBTL

Actually no. Social Security was self funded, and on a sustainable path until two major changes. The 1965 addition Medicare and Medicaid followed by the 1972 amendments which included a COLA provision for the first time.

Tim
 
Actually, yes. There is only so much wealth that gets distributed. The myth of infinite economic growth is more ridiculous than santa claus or the tooth fairy.
The myth of infinite economic growth is equally as specious as the myth of static wealth.

Wealth does grow. That doesn't mean that how wealth is distributed is irrelevant, but wealth does grow.
 
For me, growing up and living in America feels kinda like being invited to a party to build a cool new kit plane- but when I got there it was done and they just wanted to me to wax it for them.

Eesh that resonates loudly. It also sort of explains why the people who don't want to do any waxing would rather wreck the current plane so we can build a new one.
 
I know many millennials who would be happy with that life, but it's not an option in most of the country. Many of the 3 bed 1 bath homes have been renovated into 4/3s or demolished and replaced with McMansions. The ones that haven't arrived in places where you can't get a job that pays decently or are in such poor shape that the only way not to lose money while owning them is to renovate them into 4/3s (since you are bidding against companies that do that to buy it).

Kind of what I said earlier about a false demand for nicer housing.

Because wages have been statistically stagnant for 50 years (while large costs like housing have inflated), you need 2 earners in most households.

Nonsense

Because most people who actually have a landline have not priced a new landline in decades, I will spoil it for you. Cell phones are cheaper (often significantly) and offer more value.

Maybe, but how many people are buying the cheap cell phone and forgoing a data plan compared to the number that finance a phone upgrade every couple years?

(next time you are at the store, look at the price of frozen pizza and consider Dominos sells pizzas for $5.99 each)

Did. Our frozen pizzas are just under $2. Sprinkle some extra cheese over the top and you've crested over the $2 mark.
 
My Dad was 42 before he thought he was well off enough to splurge on a car that had power windows, A/C, and holy cow, an FM radio (all cars before that had AM radios). We pleaded with him order the AM/FM/cassette stereo on that car, but he said nope, too much money. And besides, he said, who pays for music when it's free on the radio?

That's the mindset of an early boomer, very conservative with what they spent.

This is exactly the challenge millennials face that older generations don't seem to understand.

In the 70s/80s/90s, my dad could buy a basic truck. Now, a basic work truck is built to compete with a Cadillac. A single cab full size truck will often sell for $60k, if you can find a dealership willing to sell you one (I have had dealers tell me they only sell single cabs to fleets).

The proof is in the exception. The Ford Maverick was released as a basic $20k truck and the wait-list was years. In fact, I know people who ordered the basic $20k hybrid when it was released and ended up paying 20% in dealer markups to get the truck they ordered. But the ones who refused still were hit with similar cost increases because the price went up 20% because the truck wasn't delivered until the next model year and the new model year cost 20% more.

As someone who spent 2 days replacing door ajar switches on the last truck I bought because even when I buy something that's 20 years old I can't find a well maintained basic truck, I would consider paying extra to get rid of some of the "luxuries" that I am told I cannot live without because I am a millennial.
 
@2-Bit Speed

Housing is a fun topic to dig into the details. Boomers led the way in the 70s with creation of zoning regulations. This was the massive explosion of NIMBY mindset.
Historically, before zoning laws constrained supply and forced people to live farther and farther out; you saw extensive demolition of houses close in and changed to multi-tenant housing. With zoning laws, this was largely prevented in metro areas.
The result, shelter supply was largely constrained within and near metro areas driving up the price. This also forced people to live farther away to be able to afford shelter, often making mass transit impractical, increasing commute costs, increasing time spent commuting, and preventing many people from being able to get home at reasonable hours to make things for them selves....

Tim
 
Did. Our frozen pizzas are just under $2. Sprinkle some extra cheese over the top and you've crested over the $2 mark.

I realize food prices are localized, but I haven't seen a frozen pizza (other than single serve) for less than $2 in years.

Around here, the single serve square pizza costs $2.25 unless you buy them in bulk.
 
The majority of companies I could work for want me to walk in with credentials proving I'll be competent and reliable. They then want me to be a cog in a well designed machine. They do NOT want me to be innovative, creative, overachieving, or really think for myself beyond filling the very limited role they have laid out. If you think I'm being overly dramatic here they pretty much said this outright in one of my Software Engineering courses in college. "We don't want heroes, we want people who can consistently generate code."

I could write a book on this, but I'll try to keep this reasonably brief. TLDR - Quit whining, be patient, develop your skills and qualifications, get into the right company and department, and you'll probably have your chance.

This situtation isn't really much different now than it was 40 years ago, or 60 years ago. Large companies have regular product lines that will keep making them money regardless of innovation. Innovation still happens, but you need to understand that R&D is on the debit side of the ledger; it's not a profit center.

Are you familiar with TRL ("Technical Readiness Level")? I won't try to explain the levels here; google if you need explanation. The deepest, cutting edge stuff typically doesn't come from large corporations. TRL 1 is the domain of universities and gov't labs and there's very little ROI at that level. At my company, our R&D department was usually in the TRL 2-4 range and mostly funded with IRAD and a little CRAD; TRL 4 or 5 was in the "advanced programs" range, had more CRAD funding, and then technologies transitioned over to development contracts around TRL 5-7, which were customer funded and had a defined transition path to production, which is where the real money is made.

If you want real creative work, you need to understand the TRL mix of a company when you apply, and you need to target jobs that will get you into the lower TRL levels.

Now, having explained that aspect, let's consider the role of innovation a bit. At my division of Lockheed Martin, we had many new development activities and we needed and encouraged innovation and creativity. BUT IT HAS TO BE APPLIED TO THE CORRECT THINGS. I don't want someone bringing me new, innovative solutions to problems we solved 20 years ago; those existing solutions are adequate. I need creative people to be focused on new problems, not yet solved, and really it's my goal to have as few of those things in a new product as possible. The more new inventions a product requires, the riskier its development.

Also, it's unreasonable to expect a new employee to be involved immediately in riskier, highly innovative work. First we need to assess his abilities on relevant tasks. Second the employee needs to learn our business and products. Third he needs to become familiar with company resources, methods, and processes.

Plus, a new grad or someone in a new industry needs time to develop a broader understanding. He needs to be aware of all the external aspects (operational environments, manufacturing processes, product support, customer preferences, etc., etc.) that determine the feasibility of his new creation. This takes time.


Then you have to compete with large corporations who have entire teams of people to deal with each of those regulatory and liability headaches.... on top of having efficiency of scale making it hard for you to be competitive.

Small companies have the advantage of agility, and they have less overhead. This allows them to develop technologies in new, untapped small markets and grow the technical capability until it steals market from the big companies. Read Christensen's book The Innovator's Dilemma.

Most of my friends in my age group are doing OK but I can't think of many I'd say are really thriving. Being a cog in the machine isn't a very fulfilling way to live.

It was no different when I was your age, and it's really no different for my current peer group. That's life.
 
Citation for wage stagnantation:
 
There's a lot of really interesting data on all this stuff, the "whys" are important.


Actually, yes. There is only so much wealth that gets distributed. The myth of infinite economic growth is more ridiculous than santa claus or the tooth fairy.

The myth of finite wealth is more ridiculous than unicorns, as any quick review of human history will quickly illustrate.
 
The interest rate on that first house was 14.5%. And the mortgage payment ate up so much of our take home, that we literally counted pennies in the check out lane at the grocery store.

All due respect, being house poor in 1992, is on you. The median income to house price when interest rates were 15% (1992) was 4.5. Today, with rates in the 7ish%, it is 7.51. Almost double the ratio. Inflation adjusted real wages (it's not a colloquialism, that term has a technical meaning, see post #68) have not doubled since 1992, not even close.

To wit, I'd take that price to financing % trade every. day. of. the. week. And twice on sunday. I'd kill for 15% interest rates at the going housing asking prices of 1992. Folks waxing about high interest rates in the past are arguing in bad faith. It's the asset price as a function of real income that creates the burden, not the financing carrying cost. To wit, a high % of a small number is still a small number, and boomers know it.

In fairness, we don't have to go back to 1992 to regain some semblance of affordability, even 2018 would suffice. But what the Fed did in 2020, we're paying for now. It made 2008 look tempered. Our purchasing power got rekt, and nothing short of a lot of demand destruction is gonna get my stolen labor value back.

1701709961605.png
 
I know many millennials who would be happy with that life, but it's not an option in most of the country. Many of the 3 bed 1 bath homes have been renovated into 4/3s or demolished and replaced with McMansions. The ones that haven't arrived in places where you can't get a job that pays decently or are in such poor shape that the only way not to lose money while owning them is to renovate them into 4/3s (since you are bidding against companies that do that to buy it).

Because wages have been statistically stagnant for 50 years (while large costs like housing have inflated), you need 2 earners in most households. With the US's non existent public transit infrastructure, that means 2 cars are not a luxury for a 2 earner household.

Because most people who actually have a landline have not priced a new landline in decades, I will spoil it for you. Cell phones are cheaper (often significantly) and offer more value.

And since eating out is the "luxury" that is most commonly thrown into, I will point out that in the 60s, the average American family spent 3x as much (as a percentage of income) on food as the Average American family does today. Many millennials I know view a home cooked meal as more of a luxury than eating out, because with everyone working it's difficult to find time to make a meal at home (that's not something prepackaged from the store), but prepackaged food is often as expensive or more expensive than takeout (next time you are at the store, look at the price of frozen pizza and consider Dominos sells pizzas for $5.99 each)

I am not going to disagree that aspects of our standard of living are better than they were in the past, but a significant part of what has made life unaffordable is that we are forced to accept these "improvements" as necessities.

As a Millennial/Gen whatever comes after couple, @2-Bit Speed and I are literally living this in real time...as a one income household, and no, we don't make even close to six figures. If we lived the modern lifestyle, I would have to work to fund it. As we don't, we can afford for me to stay home and do those things like make food from scratch.

House - We are struggling to find that 3 bed, 1 bath home because that type of house is no longer attractive to buyers. It was hard finding a buyer for my parents' 5 bedroom, 2 bathroom house in 2021 - because it didn't have a master suite, according to open-house reviews. People build what sells, and simple, modest homes barely sell these days. I could get a 3 bed, 3 bath home six ways from Sunday, though, with granite countertops and smart appliances. Funny how that comes with a higher price tag.

Landline - I've priced it, too. Our cellphones are cheaper. But they're middle of the line phones, fully paid in cash at purchase, on pay-as-you-go plans. There are way too many people my age spending over $100 a month on phones and that doesn't even count the associated plan fees.

Cars - We have two and could get away with having one. But the newest one is seven years old and the other is thirteen (big upgrade from the twenty-six year old car it replaced!).

Eating out - I can feed @2-Bit Speed and I a whole week on what it would cost us to eat out four times at a nice place like a Cracker Barrel, and about eight times at a McDonald's or Wendy's. And the food is good quality food. (I do keep some Totino's Party Pizzas around, though, in case neither of us is up for cooking. At $2.50 a piece, it is way less expensive than getting junk food at a restaurant, even if you both eat a whole one!)

So much of the pain of modern living is driven by people living above their paygrade. Have certain aspects of the economy changed, and not for the better? Yes, of course. But I could write a book on how much wasted money exists in the modern Millennial lifestyle.
 
Citation for wage stagnantation:
All internally generated data, citing their previous analysis without stating their methodology. Biased, at best.
 
All due respect, being house poor in 1992, is on you. The median income to house price when interest rates were 15% (1992) was 4.5. Today, with rates in the 7ish%, it is 7.51. Almost double the ratio. Inflation adjusted real wages (it's not a colloquialism, that term has a technical meaning, see post #68) have not doubled since 1992, not even close.

To wit, I'd take that price to financing % trade every. day. of. the. week. And twice on sunday. I'd kill for 15% interest rates at the going housing asking prices of 1992. Folks waxing about high interest rates in the past are arguing in bad faith. It's the asset price as a function of real income that creates the burden, not the financing carrying cost. To wit, a high % of a small number is still a small number, and boomers know it.

In fairness, we don't have to go back to 1992 to regain some semblance of affordability, even 2018 would suffice. But what the Fed did in 2020, we're paying for now. It made 2008 look tempered. Our purchasing power got rekt, and nothing short of a lot of demand destruction is gonna get my stolen labor value back.

View attachment 122997

Knowing then what I know now, I'd have bought stock in Apple and Microsoft. I'd be a bazillionaire. I don't see how that's got anything to do with so-called "baby boomers" stealing your slice of the pie.
 
Citation for wage stagnantation:

Just looking at their second chart is ridiculous. In 1973, minimum wage was below $2.00 an hour. It is now over $7. That's more than a tripling of hourly rate, but their chart shows an 8% increase. Their methods are flawed, very flawed.

 
Must be in nominal, not real dollars. BLS CPI calculator says $2 in Oct 1973 = $13.49 in Oct 2023.
 
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