6 ms·

Millenials aren't entitled; Boomers were just lucky

72 points by forrestbrazeal 9y ago

alexkavon 9y ago
"Your generation isn't like mine!" says person worried about history repeating itself.
Double_a_92 9y ago
Damn you scrollwheel hijackers!
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
douglaswlance 9y ago
Generalizing so broadly is a terrible way to understand the nuance of the real world.
bighi 9y ago
I won't even comment on the generalization, but... why can't it be both? They're not mutually exclusive.
- mikebelanger 9y ago
  Agreed. Its too complex an issue for it to boil down to "Generation A has it easier than B".
bootsz 9y ago
This is what has always confused me when hearing people talk about "the economy"... Clearly in the US we romanticize the post-WWII era beyond belief, and indeed it was an incredibly prosperous time. But is it really reasonable to use that as a baseline for comparison as to what constitutes the "normal" state of things? During that time you had so many favorable factors aligning in just the right way that made the post-WWII era what it was, that to me it seems more like an example of an improbable and unusually prosperous situation, not "the way things are supposed to be". It just seems like now anything short of the economy of the mid-20th century is seen as a disaster. I remember during the last recession how much everyone was always equating it to the Great Depression. I'm sorry but... what? Yes I know a lot of people were out of work, many in my family were as well. But my grandparents went through something of an entirely different magnitude in the 1930s. It's just not even comparable. But because we collectively have this idea in our heads of the post-WWII situation being "the real America", as soon as things deviate a bit and go south it's as if we're in an apocalyptic situation. Just seems to me like people need a bit more long-term historical perspective. The Boomer generation (economically speaking) came up in possibly the most favorable conditions possible. But to them it was just the "normal" way of things so they wonder why younger people can't be just as successful.
- rb808 9y ago
  Agreed see also the late 90's - that wasn't normal. Also the 2004-2008 economy - people say the bankers ruined the economy - my view is the bankers made 04-08 too good and the following depression was more normal.
  - blindwatchmaker 9y ago
    That's a very odd view. The bankers did ruin the economy, because an economy with a bubble + the ensuing shock is far worse by most metrics than one where the bubble never happened in the first place.
    - wolfgke 9y ago
      > because an economy with a bubble + the ensuing shock is far worse by most metrics than one where the bubble never happened in the first place. Only for those who invested directly or indirectly into the bubble.
      - claudiulodro 9y ago
        What about the people that started their career right after the bubble popped? There is a large segment of the population that has had its career and income dramatically stunted because they entered the workforce right after the housing bubble popped. "You can even see this in the statistics, a divot from 2008 to 2012 where millions of jobs and billions in earnings should be. In 2007, more than 50 percent of college graduates had a job offer lined up. For the class of 2009, fewer than 20 percent of them did. According to a 2010 study, every 1 percent uptick in the unemployment rate the year you graduate college means a 6 to 8 percent drop in your starting salary—a disadvantage that can linger for decades. The same study found that workers who graduated during the 1981 recession were still making less than their counterparts who graduated 10 years later. “Every recession,” Spriggs says, “creates these cohorts that never recover."[1] [1] http://highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/poor-millennials/ http://highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/poor-millenni...
shams93 9y ago
The thing is the boomers who are still alive are either the ones who "made it" or the ones who were "born to make it." What you don't see are all the Vietnam vets who died from heroin overdose on the streets in the 60s. Looking at a typical Vietnam vet's life its hard to say that all boomers were that lucky.
G4BB3R 9y ago
I can't understand. Millenials and those titles are ocidental stuff or "usonians" only?
- rdiddly 9y ago
  The whole thing is a bit silly, kind of like astrology, but yes these labels mostly were invented and applied in the West. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation#List_of_generations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation#List_of_generations
bch132 9y ago
There are plenty of things to complain about re: Baby Boomers, but this article is silly on numerous levels, particularly with logic and statistics. "the rest of the worlds’ factories were destroyed, while ours were not. Globalization hadn’t taken off, so there was no competition between, say, auto workers in the U.S. and auto workers abroad." Not sure what factories being destroyed has to do with globalization, but OK... "Digging into Chetty's data" - what a joke - those who did not live during the Great Depression earned more than those who lived in it - holy shit, what a conclusion - going to be tough for the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences to ignore such astute work... The fact that the author is a PhD candidate at NYU, will soon be an assistant professor at PSU, and is presumably a millennial isn't going to endear any Baby Boomer (or reasonable human of any generation) to the millennials with such a half-ass screed.
rdiddly 9y ago
Boomers were lucky, but it was because of energy. Energy undergirds economies and builds wealth. Energy production per capita was sharply on the rise (and overall wealth therefore expanding) when most Boomers were born. By the time GenXers grew up and Millenials were born, energy, and economic growth, had entered a plateau, with many little bumps and dips, and a measured all-time peak in 2005. There may yet be another peak coming. But if the likes of Richard Duncan[0] are right, it will eventually decline, such that per-capita energy utilization will look like a transient pulse of very short duration on the timeline of history, resembling some of these graphs here[1], and not the infinitely upward-sloping curve imagined by techno-optimists. Boomers simply had the good luck to be born on the upward-sloping portion of the per-capita energy utilization curve. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olduvai_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olduvai_theory [1]https://duckduckgo.com/?q=olduvai+theory&iar=images&iax=images&ia=images https://duckduckgo.com/?q=olduvai+theory&iar=images&iax=imag...
- IshKebab 9y ago
  That sounds like bullshit. Seems much more likely that energy use and production follows the economy rather than the other way around. Boomers did well because the population was much smaller and globalisation wasn't a thing.
  - rdiddly 9y ago
    On the way up, energy use follows economic activity. On the way down, it's vice versa.
RickJWag 9y ago
As a near-Boomer (early Gen-Xer) I do believe I fell into a lucky time. I left high school, then a quick college-paying stint in the service to a red-hot economy in 1990. (Ronald Reagan was to thank for that, and Bill Clinton kept it going.) I started in Programming then, it's been a great ride to this day. I think kids today have it harder, the opportunity isn't there. AI may take the programming jobs, I'm not sure. (Kids today also have to be exceptionally well-grounded, I think there's a lot more ways to go astray.) I wish the Millenials good luck-- they'll need it.

alexkavon 9y ago

"Your generation isn't like mine!" says person worried about history repeating itself.

Double_a_92 9y ago

Damn you scrollwheel hijackers!

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

douglaswlance 9y ago

Generalizing so broadly is a terrible way to understand the nuance of the real world.

bighi 9y ago

I won't even comment on the generalization, but... why can't it be both? They're not mutually exclusive.

mikebelanger 9y ago
Agreed. Its too complex an issue for it to boil down to "Generation A has it easier than B".

bootsz 9y ago

This is what has always confused me when hearing people talk about "the economy"... Clearly in the US we romanticize the post-WWII era beyond belief, and indeed it was an incredibly prosperous time. But is it really reasonable to use that as a baseline for comparison as to what constitutes the "normal" state of things? During that time you had so many favorable factors aligning in just the right way that made the post-WWII era what it was, that to me it seems more like an example of an improbable and unusually prosperous situation, not "the way things are supposed to be". It just seems like now anything short of the economy of the mid-20th century is seen as a disaster. I remember during the last recession how much everyone was always equating it to the Great Depression. I'm sorry but... what? Yes I know a lot of people were out of work, many in my family were as well. But my grandparents went through something of an entirely different magnitude in the 1930s. It's just not even comparable. But because we collectively have this idea in our heads of the post-WWII situation being "the real America", as soon as things deviate a bit and go south it's as if we're in an apocalyptic situation. Just seems to me like people need a bit more long-term historical perspective. The Boomer generation (economically speaking) came up in possibly the most favorable conditions possible. But to them it was just the "normal" way of things so they wonder why younger people can't be just as successful.

rb808 9y ago
Agreed see also the late 90's - that wasn't normal. Also the 2004-2008 economy - people say the bankers ruined the economy - my view is the bankers made 04-08 too good and the following depression was more normal.
- blindwatchmaker 9y ago
  That's a very odd view. The bankers did ruin the economy, because an economy with a bubble + the ensuing shock is far worse by most metrics than one where the bubble never happened in the first place.
  - wolfgke 9y ago
    > because an economy with a bubble + the ensuing shock is far worse by most metrics than one where the bubble never happened in the first place. Only for those who invested directly or indirectly into the bubble.
    - claudiulodro 9y ago
      What about the people that started their career right after the bubble popped? There is a large segment of the population that has had its career and income dramatically stunted because they entered the workforce right after the housing bubble popped. "You can even see this in the statistics, a divot from 2008 to 2012 where millions of jobs and billions in earnings should be. In 2007, more than 50 percent of college graduates had a job offer lined up. For the class of 2009, fewer than 20 percent of them did. According to a 2010 study, every 1 percent uptick in the unemployment rate the year you graduate college means a 6 to 8 percent drop in your starting salary—a disadvantage that can linger for decades. The same study found that workers who graduated during the 1981 recession were still making less than their counterparts who graduated 10 years later. “Every recession,” Spriggs says, “creates these cohorts that never recover."[1] [1] http://highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/poor-millennials/ http://highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/poor-millenni...

shams93 9y ago

The thing is the boomers who are still alive are either the ones who "made it" or the ones who were "born to make it." What you don't see are all the Vietnam vets who died from heroin overdose on the streets in the 60s. Looking at a typical Vietnam vet's life its hard to say that all boomers were that lucky.

G4BB3R 9y ago

I can't understand. Millenials and those titles are ocidental stuff or "usonians" only?

rdiddly 9y ago
The whole thing is a bit silly, kind of like astrology, but yes these labels mostly were invented and applied in the West. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation#List_of_generations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation#List_of_generations

bch132 9y ago

There are plenty of things to complain about re: Baby Boomers, but this article is silly on numerous levels, particularly with logic and statistics. "the rest of the worlds’ factories were destroyed, while ours were not. Globalization hadn’t taken off, so there was no competition between, say, auto workers in the U.S. and auto workers abroad." Not sure what factories being destroyed has to do with globalization, but OK... "Digging into Chetty's data" - what a joke - those who did not live during the Great Depression earned more than those who lived in it - holy shit, what a conclusion - going to be tough for the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences to ignore such astute work... The fact that the author is a PhD candidate at NYU, will soon be an assistant professor at PSU, and is presumably a millennial isn't going to endear any Baby Boomer (or reasonable human of any generation) to the millennials with such a half-ass screed.

rdiddly 9y ago

Boomers were lucky, but it was because of energy. Energy undergirds economies and builds wealth. Energy production per capita was sharply on the rise (and overall wealth therefore expanding) when most Boomers were born. By the time GenXers grew up and Millenials were born, energy, and economic growth, had entered a plateau, with many little bumps and dips, and a measured all-time peak in 2005. There may yet be another peak coming. But if the likes of Richard Duncan[0] are right, it will eventually decline, such that per-capita energy utilization will look like a transient pulse of very short duration on the timeline of history, resembling some of these graphs here[1], and not the infinitely upward-sloping curve imagined by techno-optimists. Boomers simply had the good luck to be born on the upward-sloping portion of the per-capita energy utilization curve. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olduvai_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olduvai_theory [1]https://duckduckgo.com/?q=olduvai+theory&iar=images&iax=images&ia=images https://duckduckgo.com/?q=olduvai+theory&iar=images&iax=imag...

IshKebab 9y ago
That sounds like bullshit. Seems much more likely that energy use and production follows the economy rather than the other way around. Boomers did well because the population was much smaller and globalisation wasn't a thing.
- rdiddly 9y ago
  On the way up, energy use follows economic activity. On the way down, it's vice versa.

RickJWag 9y ago

As a near-Boomer (early Gen-Xer) I do believe I fell into a lucky time. I left high school, then a quick college-paying stint in the service to a red-hot economy in 1990. (Ronald Reagan was to thank for that, and Bill Clinton kept it going.) I started in Programming then, it's been a great ride to this day. I think kids today have it harder, the opportunity isn't there. AI may take the programming jobs, I'm not sure. (Kids today also have to be exceptionally well-grounded, I think there's a lot more ways to go astray.) I wish the Millenials good luck-- they'll need it.