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I don't believe your graph https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/12/03/precariousness-modern-young-adulthood-one-chart/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/b

I don't believe your graph https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/12/03/precariousness-modern-young-adulthood-one-chart/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/12/03/precariou... i never said their wealth made them live longer, science did

arcticbull 5y ago
The chart I provided is the same data re-stated per capita instead of as a share of all wealth (after all the population had almost doubled since 1990 alone, and with it the amount of wealth in total) - and adjusted for CPI-U. It’s just a different perspective on the same numbers but far less click baity. You do know that life expectancy has been declining in the US for a while now right?
- cblconfederate 5y ago
  And that s why that chart is misleading, because prices of e.g. houses have gone up and millenials are called to manage with just 3.5% of the total wealth while boomers had 21% in their age. This clearly sets the dynamics of which generation will be working for whom. And while there is a temporary reduction of life expectancy due to various factors, incuding covid, millenials will most likely see extension of their own life expectancy within their lifetimes due to medical advances.
  - arcticbull 5y ago
    The share of wealth is irrelevant because the pie grew. It would only matter if the pie stayed the same size. You were asking if millennials are doing worse than their parents, but worse is an individual thing, a per-capita thing. And they're simply not. They're doing just about as well as all the other past generations were at their age in constant dollar terms. The old adage goes "it takes money to make money" and their wealth will increase exponentially as they get older too. But they're not doing worse. Sorry. And they're going to inherit boomer wealth soon, collecting the share too. [edit] (In fact the WaPo article you linked mentions the same exact thing I'm telling you, and makes a half-hearted attempt to compensate - failing to also account for the total amount of wealth on a per capita basis. This article is clickbait. > One important caveat to the chart above is that the three generations aren’t the same size, population-wise. In 1990, for instance, boomers accounted for 31 percent of the total U.S. population. In 2008, GenXers were only 22 percent of the population.) Some things are a lot more expensive, some things are a lot less expensive, but even ones you pick are misleading. For instance, housing. 1 square foot of house in America on average costs the same as it did in the 1970s adjusted for inflation. [1] However the average house is twice as big and the average family smaller. With drastically higher interest rates back then, and most people on a 30 year fixed, housing is much more affordable on a square foot basis. It could be better, and zoning rules are at issue. But a lot of things are cheaper too. Basically anything that doesn't require human labor to assemble. TVs. Computers. Tons of stuff. > This clearly sets the dynamics of which generation will be working for whom. The only dynamic you're seeing is time value. > And while there is a temporary reduction of life expectancy due to various factors, incuding covid, millenials will most likely see extension of their own life expectancy within their lifetimes due to medical advances. That's (a) not the current trend, though it may reverse and (b) the opposite of the argument you were making about boomers earlier. > And while there is a temporary reduction of life expectancy due to various factors, incuding covid... Also, COVID killed boomers not millenials. [1] https://fee.org/articles/new-homes-today-have-twice-the-square-feet-per-person-as-in-1973/ https://fee.org/articles/new-homes-today-have-twice-the-squa...
    - medvezhenok 5y ago
      There are many things where relative value is more important than absolute value. In questions of mating and evolutionary selection, for example - it doesn't matter how much you have in absolute terms, it matters than you have more than your competitors. And questions of mating and reproduction are some of the most basic and fundamental (and important) to any animal/human, no matter how many abstractions we put on top of that. In a capitalistic society, money is power - if a generation has 3% of the wealth they necessarily have less power than a different generation that had 22% of the wealth in their time. The average house in America is not a very useful statistic today since a lot of those houses are in areas with no economic opportunity because of decisions taken to offshore labor - they used to have opportunity ~50 years ago, but that is now gone. You have to look at houses near urban areas (since those places retain the opportunity that was more spread out before). And then you'll see that costs have actually gone up. It's not nearly as simple of a comparison.
    - cblconfederate 5y ago
      > But a lot of things are cheaper too. Basically anything that doesn't require human labor to assemble. TVs. Computers. Tons of stuff. this is bullshit, it's the "why don't they eat cake" argument. the world is not going backwards, of course TVs have gotten cheaper, for millenials and boomers alike. I don't think there is any sense of evenness in the fact that 21% of the US population holds 51% of the wealth, and a younger 21%, which naturally works harder controls 5%. What matters is not being merely able to buy 1 TV, but who can buy most of the TVs. What you 're saying is "Yeah they should be fine with breadcrumbs", and that they should tolerate this inequality until death meets the boomers. That's basically generational serfdom
      - sershe 5y ago
        The reason the generation holds this wealth is because it spent its life working and accumulating it. Is it really surprising that someone who worked for 40 years, including the prime productive years of their career, has received more money in aggregate, than someone who has worked for 10, just starting their career? Even without compounding returns (i.e. economy growing), and given a fixed spending/saving rates over time, you would expect the former to have vastly more saved money.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

arcticbull 5y ago

The chart I provided is the same data re-stated per capita instead of as a share of all wealth (after all the population had almost doubled since 1990 alone, and with it the amount of wealth in total) - and adjusted for CPI-U. It’s just a different perspective on the same numbers but far less click baity. You do know that life expectancy has been declining in the US for a while now right?

cblconfederate 5y ago
And that s why that chart is misleading, because prices of e.g. houses have gone up and millenials are called to manage with just 3.5% of the total wealth while boomers had 21% in their age. This clearly sets the dynamics of which generation will be working for whom. And while there is a temporary reduction of life expectancy due to various factors, incuding covid, millenials will most likely see extension of their own life expectancy within their lifetimes due to medical advances.
- arcticbull 5y ago
  The share of wealth is irrelevant because the pie grew. It would only matter if the pie stayed the same size. You were asking if millennials are doing worse than their parents, but worse is an individual thing, a per-capita thing. And they're simply not. They're doing just about as well as all the other past generations were at their age in constant dollar terms. The old adage goes "it takes money to make money" and their wealth will increase exponentially as they get older too. But they're not doing worse. Sorry. And they're going to inherit boomer wealth soon, collecting the share too. [edit] (In fact the WaPo article you linked mentions the same exact thing I'm telling you, and makes a half-hearted attempt to compensate - failing to also account for the total amount of wealth on a per capita basis. This article is clickbait. > One important caveat to the chart above is that the three generations aren’t the same size, population-wise. In 1990, for instance, boomers accounted for 31 percent of the total U.S. population. In 2008, GenXers were only 22 percent of the population.) Some things are a lot more expensive, some things are a lot less expensive, but even ones you pick are misleading. For instance, housing. 1 square foot of house in America on average costs the same as it did in the 1970s adjusted for inflation. [1] However the average house is twice as big and the average family smaller. With drastically higher interest rates back then, and most people on a 30 year fixed, housing is much more affordable on a square foot basis. It could be better, and zoning rules are at issue. But a lot of things are cheaper too. Basically anything that doesn't require human labor to assemble. TVs. Computers. Tons of stuff. > This clearly sets the dynamics of which generation will be working for whom. The only dynamic you're seeing is time value. > And while there is a temporary reduction of life expectancy due to various factors, incuding covid, millenials will most likely see extension of their own life expectancy within their lifetimes due to medical advances. That's (a) not the current trend, though it may reverse and (b) the opposite of the argument you were making about boomers earlier. > And while there is a temporary reduction of life expectancy due to various factors, incuding covid... Also, COVID killed boomers not millenials. [1] https://fee.org/articles/new-homes-today-have-twice-the-square-feet-per-person-as-in-1973/ https://fee.org/articles/new-homes-today-have-twice-the-squa...
  - medvezhenok 5y ago
    There are many things where relative value is more important than absolute value. In questions of mating and evolutionary selection, for example - it doesn't matter how much you have in absolute terms, it matters than you have more than your competitors. And questions of mating and reproduction are some of the most basic and fundamental (and important) to any animal/human, no matter how many abstractions we put on top of that. In a capitalistic society, money is power - if a generation has 3% of the wealth they necessarily have less power than a different generation that had 22% of the wealth in their time. The average house in America is not a very useful statistic today since a lot of those houses are in areas with no economic opportunity because of decisions taken to offshore labor - they used to have opportunity ~50 years ago, but that is now gone. You have to look at houses near urban areas (since those places retain the opportunity that was more spread out before). And then you'll see that costs have actually gone up. It's not nearly as simple of a comparison.
  - cblconfederate 5y ago
    > But a lot of things are cheaper too. Basically anything that doesn't require human labor to assemble. TVs. Computers. Tons of stuff. this is bullshit, it's the "why don't they eat cake" argument. the world is not going backwards, of course TVs have gotten cheaper, for millenials and boomers alike. I don't think there is any sense of evenness in the fact that 21% of the US population holds 51% of the wealth, and a younger 21%, which naturally works harder controls 5%. What matters is not being merely able to buy 1 TV, but who can buy most of the TVs. What you 're saying is "Yeah they should be fine with breadcrumbs", and that they should tolerate this inequality until death meets the boomers. That's basically generational serfdom
    - sershe 5y ago
      The reason the generation holds this wealth is because it spent its life working and accumulating it. Is it really surprising that someone who worked for 40 years, including the prime productive years of their career, has received more money in aggregate, than someone who has worked for 10, just starting their career? Even without compounding returns (i.e. economy growing), and given a fixed spending/saving rates over time, you would expect the former to have vastly more saved money.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]