5 ms·

No, millennials don't have it worse than previous generations

33 points by Chazprime 5y ago

Thetawaves 5y ago
Opening salvo rests on a nonsensical point? > If GDP is calculated correctly, it should correspond to mean income levels,
- IncRnd 5y ago
  On that point the article uses what is a far too prevalent action - redefining words to align with a particular position being advocated.
- rgbrenner 5y ago
  The article is filled with nonsensical points. I tried to make a list, but didn't want to post a wall of text. "even if these gains merely reflected the fact that old people are getting richer, rather than young people, it wouldn't make much of a difference to my general argument, as millennials will eventually get older, and thus benefit from these gains just as old people do now." Let me rephrase that: even if I'm wrong and millennials are worse off, I'm sure they'll do better later. Further down he answers the question about whether it's harder for millennials to buy a home with the national home ownership rate... a stat that isn't broken down by age group. I read this entire article and I regret it.
  - bitwise-evan 5y ago
    > The average cost of housing has gone up over time, but this trend is mainly driven by the fact that modern houses are larger and built better than houses in the past. Oh, that explains why the house that sold for $300k in 1990 sold today for $2M (only 3X adjusted for inflation). It must have gotten 3X larger and 3X better built, even though it is the exact same house with a couple extra layers of paint and a redone kitchen.
3np 5y ago
Considering all metrics going consistently up, can't it be concluded that they're not properly adjusted by inflation? Also, apart from debt, none of them are broken down per generation. The author does acknowledge this but without additional data this is mostly an opinion piece with graphs.
jessaustin 5y ago
One would have liked to examine the data behind the "growth in real income has been much larger" link, but unfortunately that links to an ad for a sort of small appliance called an "air fryer". As usual, examining GDP and income separately, as TFA does, is quite misleading. Enlightenment comes from viewing those together. [0] [0] https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/ https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/
chadlavi 5y ago
That's why we millennials famously don't have to go to college to get union jobs that can support a family of four or more on a single income with guaranteed retirement.
- mikecoles 5y ago
  Drop the union and things get even better. Don't let the poor performers drag the average or top down.
  - cyberge99 5y ago
    Does mean imply that the outliers were taken out? Seems he meant to say average. What a bullshit article.
  - rualca 5y ago
    > Drop the union and things get even better. Don't let the poor performers drag the average or top down. As someone who lives in Europe and benefits from unions in multiple ways on a daily basis, I really do not understand how this absurd myth regarding "unions protect and foster bad performers" came from. I mean, the core belief that supports this idea is that the only thing that's needed for a professional to enjoy decent and safe working conditions where he is fairly compensated for his work is to be really good at his job. No need to even have negotiation in the picture, rewards just magically fall from the sky as some sort of cargo cult. But reality does not really work like that, does it? Specially for non-white collar jobs whose role in the production chain is designed to be easily replaceable and there are diminished returns in employee performance.
- tannedNerd 5y ago
  It ridiculous to try to make the comparisons the article does, when you look at real purchasing power instead of trying to fake these numbers. You are completely right, no one could dream of owning a house and supporting a family of four with no college degree today, yet that happened up until around the early 90's. It wasn't unheard for someone to be completely unskilled and get a good paying union job and learn the skills on the job.
IncRnd 5y ago
> If GDP is calculated correctly, it should correspond to mean income levels That's equating Apples and Oranges. Gross domestic product is the total value of all the finished goods and services produced within a country and does not correlate to personal income.
- jfengel 5y ago
  There are several ways to calculate GDP, one of which involves counting the money paid in salary, rather than the money people spend on stuff. In theory, they're supposed to be equal: dollars going in = dollars going out. "Income" means more than just income. It also factors in profits, and money leaving the economy through trade. So it's not comparing apples to oranges, but it's still very wrong. Most obviously, the profit is a big factor. GDP can go up and everybody's salaries go down: it means that somebody is making more profit. And, of course, GDP is the sum. You get the mean by dividing by the population. But that makes the assumption that income is divided equally, which it isn't. Income inequality means that the median can go down while the mean goes up. In other words, yeah, TFA is BS. But it's worth noting that salaries + profits should equal GDP. (There are some other factors involving taxes and trade, but that's the gist.)
meh99 5y ago
Cherry picked stats, arguments that are waved away as conforming to an obscure theory without showing it’s true… As the author kindly points out… member of Gen Z … ah, inexperience… happy to forget I read this and give them a break.
abathur 5y ago
The quickest way to avoid posting inflammatory clickbait on this is probably to bother comparing the mean to the median. https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:US_GDP_per_capita_vs_median_household_income.png https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:US_GDP_per_capita_...
- refurb 5y ago
  This ignores the effects of an aging population and changes in household size during that time.
  - abathur 5y ago
    I didn't say the median was perfect. I said comparing the mean and the median was a quick way to avoid posting clickbait. Because it's clear that the median and mean aren't strongly correlated anymore.
Spivak 5y ago
The central thesis of this article that is stated ad-nausium is that “Look! Millennials have a higher standard of living, they must have it easier.” This is no different than when some talking heads on Fox News tried to belittle Gen X’s financial hardships by citing the fact that almost all homes now have refrigerators. If you define worse and better in ways that people don’t actually mean then of course your thesis is proved and you get a snappy title. Higher consumption doesn’t mean higher disposable income, it means higher consumption. I consume a lot more and have more “disposable income” because I cannot afford things like children, a house, a nice car, that would make my income non-disposable. You will realize the gains that older people have now when you’re older is a huge maybe. The author is taking the wrong thing away from Bulmol’s Cost Disease. The split between goods becoming much much cheaper and services much much more expensive (remember that increased consumption thing? I can afford very nice acrylic nails but not the labor for someone else to install them) is that when you need services the bill hits like a truck and cost of living tracks mostly goods not services. Houses being bigger is meaningless when the location is what you’re paying for. If you don’t have the choice to pay less for less it doesn’t make any difference that you’re now “getting more.”
fritztastic 5y ago
That's a lot of words to avoid acknowledging it now takes many more hours of labor to gain/achieve the same things. Meanwhile inflation rises to make up for tax cuts for the wealthy as the inequality between the rich and mortals widens. But I'm sure there are plenty of ways you can angle statistics to support any POV, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
refurb 5y ago
Interesting statistics and some pretty good counter arguments to the narrative “everyone knows is true”. In particular the commentary about wealth versus age is an important one. Baby boomers are an outsized generation. They are in retirement which is the wealthiest period of one’s life. So one should expect inequity to rise with their rising wealth, then fall after they pass away.
joppy 5y ago
“Arguably, the main reason why costs have gone up in [healthcare and education] is because society is richer, and thus more willing to bear the cost of better facilities and higher wages for healthcare and education workers.” Please show me the nurse or teacher whose wages have risen proportionately to the cost of healthcare or education…
- AlexandrB 5y ago
  There's also the increase in non-tenure track profs instead of tenured positions[1]. One could argue the quality of education is falling, not rising. [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/04/the-ever-shrinking-role-of-tenured-college-professors-in-1-chart/274849/ https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/04/the-eve...
shrubble 5y ago
In the early 1950s my parents got married. The first house they rented was $10 per month. Minimum wage at that time was 75 cents per hour. Ignoring taxation, you could rent a place for two people for approximately 15 hours a month. I don't think that there is an equivalent situation anywhere in the USA at this point...
hn_throwaway_99 5y ago
This "analysis" in this post is so bad it's laughable. And I say this not as someone who is a Millennial, but someone who is in an older generation and feels damn lucky I was able to get a college education and a house before they became hopelessly out of reach.
- refurb 5y ago
  That’s your contribution? The analysis of “laughable”?
stonogo 5y ago
This is somewhat embarrassing. If GDP is calculated correctly, it should correspond to mean income levels It doesn't! https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2014/12/why-gdp-is-not-an-accurate-measure-of-economic-growth/ https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2014/12/why-gdp-is-not-an-acc... the growth in average personal consumption, which has risen about 950% since 1950, clearly indicating that Americans today have far more disposable income than in the past. Or it means they have less savings! https://www.statista.com/statistics/246268/personal-savings-rate-in-the-united-states-by-month/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/246268/personal-savings-... note the spike where covid relief matches the dip in expenditure. data sources oftentimes only include people's after-tax take-home pay, after deducting worker benefits like health insurance. When you try to include these benefits, the growth in real income has been much larger than these statistics generally show. Of course, because healthcare costs have gone completely insane, so providing ANY in total comp can make anyone look rich! https://img.datawrapper.de/UxUUj/full.png https://img.datawrapper.de/UxUUj/full.png Then we're treated to "don't worry, old people will die," "college and healthcare are like jewelry," "everything is fine because old people are buying multiple houses," a truly bizarre assertion that home prices have gone up because new houses are bigger, completely failing to explain why older, smaller house prices have risen at a faster rate, everything is fine because the millenials are in ten percent less debt than GenX, and then we throw out the Gini coefficient because taxes are satisfactory wealth redistribution. The confidence with which bizarre, stridently incorrect conclusions are drawn from single charts is breathtaking. I predict a rapid growth in subscriber count for this newsletter.

33 points by Chazprime 5y ago

Opening salvo rests on a nonsensical point? > If GDP is calculated correctly, it should correspond to mean income levels,

IncRnd 5y ago
On that point the article uses what is a far too prevalent action - redefining words to align with a particular position being advocated.
rgbrenner 5y ago
The article is filled with nonsensical points. I tried to make a list, but didn't want to post a wall of text. "even if these gains merely reflected the fact that old people are getting richer, rather than young people, it wouldn't make much of a difference to my general argument, as millennials will eventually get older, and thus benefit from these gains just as old people do now." Let me rephrase that: even if I'm wrong and millennials are worse off, I'm sure they'll do better later. Further down he answers the question about whether it's harder for millennials to buy a home with the national home ownership rate... a stat that isn't broken down by age group. I read this entire article and I regret it.
- bitwise-evan 5y ago
  > The average cost of housing has gone up over time, but this trend is mainly driven by the fact that modern houses are larger and built better than houses in the past. Oh, that explains why the house that sold for $300k in 1990 sold today for $2M (only 3X adjusted for inflation). It must have gotten 3X larger and 3X better built, even though it is the exact same house with a couple extra layers of paint and a redone kitchen.

3np 5y ago

Considering all metrics going consistently up, can't it be concluded that they're not properly adjusted by inflation? Also, apart from debt, none of them are broken down per generation. The author does acknowledge this but without additional data this is mostly an opinion piece with graphs.

jessaustin 5y ago

One would have liked to examine the data behind the "growth in real income has been much larger" link, but unfortunately that links to an ad for a sort of small appliance called an "air fryer". As usual, examining GDP and income separately, as TFA does, is quite misleading. Enlightenment comes from viewing those together. [0] [0] https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/ https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/

chadlavi 5y ago

That's why we millennials famously don't have to go to college to get union jobs that can support a family of four or more on a single income with guaranteed retirement.

mikecoles 5y ago
Drop the union and things get even better. Don't let the poor performers drag the average or top down.
- cyberge99 5y ago
  Does mean imply that the outliers were taken out? Seems he meant to say average. What a bullshit article.
- rualca 5y ago
  > Drop the union and things get even better. Don't let the poor performers drag the average or top down. As someone who lives in Europe and benefits from unions in multiple ways on a daily basis, I really do not understand how this absurd myth regarding "unions protect and foster bad performers" came from. I mean, the core belief that supports this idea is that the only thing that's needed for a professional to enjoy decent and safe working conditions where he is fairly compensated for his work is to be really good at his job. No need to even have negotiation in the picture, rewards just magically fall from the sky as some sort of cargo cult. But reality does not really work like that, does it? Specially for non-white collar jobs whose role in the production chain is designed to be easily replaceable and there are diminished returns in employee performance.
tannedNerd 5y ago
It ridiculous to try to make the comparisons the article does, when you look at real purchasing power instead of trying to fake these numbers. You are completely right, no one could dream of owning a house and supporting a family of four with no college degree today, yet that happened up until around the early 90's. It wasn't unheard for someone to be completely unskilled and get a good paying union job and learn the skills on the job.

IncRnd 5y ago

> If GDP is calculated correctly, it should correspond to mean income levels That's equating Apples and Oranges. Gross domestic product is the total value of all the finished goods and services produced within a country and does not correlate to personal income.

jfengel 5y ago
There are several ways to calculate GDP, one of which involves counting the money paid in salary, rather than the money people spend on stuff. In theory, they're supposed to be equal: dollars going in = dollars going out. "Income" means more than just income. It also factors in profits, and money leaving the economy through trade. So it's not comparing apples to oranges, but it's still very wrong. Most obviously, the profit is a big factor. GDP can go up and everybody's salaries go down: it means that somebody is making more profit. And, of course, GDP is the sum. You get the mean by dividing by the population. But that makes the assumption that income is divided equally, which it isn't. Income inequality means that the median can go down while the mean goes up. In other words, yeah, TFA is BS. But it's worth noting that salaries + profits should equal GDP. (There are some other factors involving taxes and trade, but that's the gist.)

meh99 5y ago

Cherry picked stats, arguments that are waved away as conforming to an obscure theory without showing it’s true… As the author kindly points out… member of Gen Z … ah, inexperience… happy to forget I read this and give them a break.

abathur 5y ago

The quickest way to avoid posting inflammatory clickbait on this is probably to bother comparing the mean to the median. https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:US_GDP_per_capita_vs_median_household_income.png https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:US_GDP_per_capita_...

refurb 5y ago
This ignores the effects of an aging population and changes in household size during that time.
- abathur 5y ago
  I didn't say the median was perfect. I said comparing the mean and the median was a quick way to avoid posting clickbait. Because it's clear that the median and mean aren't strongly correlated anymore.

Spivak 5y ago

The central thesis of this article that is stated ad-nausium is that “Look! Millennials have a higher standard of living, they must have it easier.” This is no different than when some talking heads on Fox News tried to belittle Gen X’s financial hardships by citing the fact that almost all homes now have refrigerators. If you define worse and better in ways that people don’t actually mean then of course your thesis is proved and you get a snappy title. Higher consumption doesn’t mean higher disposable income, it means higher consumption. I consume a lot more and have more “disposable income” because I cannot afford things like children, a house, a nice car, that would make my income non-disposable. You will realize the gains that older people have now when you’re older is a huge maybe. The author is taking the wrong thing away from Bulmol’s Cost Disease. The split between goods becoming much much cheaper and services much much more expensive (remember that increased consumption thing? I can afford very nice acrylic nails but not the labor for someone else to install them) is that when you need services the bill hits like a truck and cost of living tracks mostly goods not services. Houses being bigger is meaningless when the location is what you’re paying for. If you don’t have the choice to pay less for less it doesn’t make any difference that you’re now “getting more.”

fritztastic 5y ago

That's a lot of words to avoid acknowledging it now takes many more hours of labor to gain/achieve the same things. Meanwhile inflation rises to make up for tax cuts for the wealthy as the inequality between the rich and mortals widens. But I'm sure there are plenty of ways you can angle statistics to support any POV, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

refurb 5y ago

Interesting statistics and some pretty good counter arguments to the narrative “everyone knows is true”. In particular the commentary about wealth versus age is an important one. Baby boomers are an outsized generation. They are in retirement which is the wealthiest period of one’s life. So one should expect inequity to rise with their rising wealth, then fall after they pass away.

joppy 5y ago

“Arguably, the main reason why costs have gone up in [healthcare and education] is because society is richer, and thus more willing to bear the cost of better facilities and higher wages for healthcare and education workers.” Please show me the nurse or teacher whose wages have risen proportionately to the cost of healthcare or education…

AlexandrB 5y ago
There's also the increase in non-tenure track profs instead of tenured positions[1]. One could argue the quality of education is falling, not rising. [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/04/the-ever-shrinking-role-of-tenured-college-professors-in-1-chart/274849/ https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/04/the-eve...

shrubble 5y ago

In the early 1950s my parents got married. The first house they rented was $10 per month. Minimum wage at that time was 75 cents per hour. Ignoring taxation, you could rent a place for two people for approximately 15 hours a month. I don't think that there is an equivalent situation anywhere in the USA at this point...

hn_throwaway_99 5y ago

This "analysis" in this post is so bad it's laughable. And I say this not as someone who is a Millennial, but someone who is in an older generation and feels damn lucky I was able to get a college education and a house before they became hopelessly out of reach.

refurb 5y ago
That’s your contribution? The analysis of “laughable”?

stonogo 5y ago

This is somewhat embarrassing. If GDP is calculated correctly, it should correspond to mean income levels It doesn't! https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2014/12/why-gdp-is-not-an-accurate-measure-of-economic-growth/ https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2014/12/why-gdp-is-not-an-acc... the growth in average personal consumption, which has risen about 950% since 1950, clearly indicating that Americans today have far more disposable income than in the past. Or it means they have less savings! https://www.statista.com/statistics/246268/personal-savings-rate-in-the-united-states-by-month/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/246268/personal-savings-... note the spike where covid relief matches the dip in expenditure. data sources oftentimes only include people's after-tax take-home pay, after deducting worker benefits like health insurance. When you try to include these benefits, the growth in real income has been much larger than these statistics generally show. Of course, because healthcare costs have gone completely insane, so providing ANY in total comp can make anyone look rich! https://img.datawrapper.de/UxUUj/full.png https://img.datawrapper.de/UxUUj/full.png Then we're treated to "don't worry, old people will die," "college and healthcare are like jewelry," "everything is fine because old people are buying multiple houses," a truly bizarre assertion that home prices have gone up because new houses are bigger, completely failing to explain why older, smaller house prices have risen at a faster rate, everything is fine because the millenials are in ten percent less debt than GenX, and then we throw out the Gini coefficient because taxes are satisfactory wealth redistribution. The confidence with which bizarre, stridently incorrect conclusions are drawn from single charts is breathtaking. I predict a rapid growth in subscriber count for this newsletter.