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‘Save money so you don’t retire eating cat food’ - This statement presumes my generation will ever be able to retire. In Sydney, houses are so expensive my whol

‘Save money so you don’t retire eating cat food’ - This statement presumes my generation will ever be able to retire. In Sydney, houses are so expensive my whole generation will be practically forced to rent for life, there’s no retiring when your rent is doubled the entire aged pension. I genuinely think the economic system will need a complete rethink in the next 20 years or so, because right now it’s completely failing to deliver for my generation. No matter how well we do, the basic life goals of home ownership and starting a family are out of reach for us.

bamboozled 4y ago
Do Gen Z people just stop playing the game at some stage. Who is going to enforce this? The rapidly aging majority of the populace? Will they just keep paying higher and higher taxes to support elderly people who likely own much more than they ? I don't think this is a desirable outcome, but I can also see it being an option. Essentially people just checking out from conventional work hard, pay high taxes, have less. Not sure if people will stick with that for too long. I looked up Australian house prices and they're so ridiculous it's hard to even fathom. It's a great place but really, wow?
- tablespoon 4y ago
  > Do Gen Z people just stop playing the game at some stage. Who is going to enforce this? The rapidly aging majority of the populace? Will they just keep paying higher and higher taxes to support elderly people who likely own much more than they ? Gen Z people will enforce it. No group ever acts as a monolith. For a dumb fictional example, IIRC, all the enforcers in Hunger Games were members of one of the subjugated districts given a better quality of life due to their service. For a real-life example, I believe in Russian and Chinese prisons, the lowest level of enforcement and supervision are actually consists of inmates who've been given privileges by the guards.
  - hotpotamus 4y ago
    I mean, if you want a bleaker example, look at the capos in concentration camps.
    - tablespoon 4y ago
      > I mean, if you want a bleaker example, look at the capos in concentration camps. I think that's actually more or less the same system that I was referring to, I just couldn't remember the term.
tablespoon 4y ago
> I genuinely think the economic system will need a complete rethink in the next 20 years or so, because right now it’s completely failing to deliver for my generation. No matter how well we do, the basic life goals of home ownership and starting a family are out of reach for us. Nah, we'll just adopt something like the Logan's Run solution: replace the pension with carrousel and otherwise stay the course.
swalsh 4y ago
"In Sydney, houses are so expensive my whole generation will be practically forced to rent for life" Something i've been thinking about for a while. Gen Z and Millenials are not having children at replenishment. The older folks are living a lot longer, so our population is still going up today, but the 30 year olds who will have children are alive today, we can count them. There's less of them. As older generations start to dwindle, and are forced to move to long term care situations (which to be fair, I think a lot of boomers will resist as hard as possible), the housing supply crunch will probably go down. The real drain on society will be a raising retired population, and a dwindling working population. The older generations outnumbering the younger isn't going to help the younger generations politically either.
- themoonisachees 4y ago
  Thankfully, lower working-class population means more bargaining power for them, as labour is rarer. But yeah the fact that by 70 years-old most people are considered unfit for work yet the median age of congress is higher than 60 says a lot
throwaway22032 4y ago
Why do you think it "needs" a complete rethink? We've had periods in relatively recent history in which many people simply live in cramped conditions and work dusk until dawn (see Victorian Britain). I think it's far more likely that there's a general reduction in standard of living for everyone below the 90/95/99th percentile. There's not really any pressure to prevent it, people just keep waking up every morning and going to work regardless of how bad it gets. 10-15 years ago when I graduated we had basically the same situation - the bar to win has just been raised. You either aim to be in the top 10/5/1% (adjust as necessary), or you have a life of struggling to pay the bills forever.
mathlover2 4y ago
I think the current economic system needs significant reform, and in many countries massive reform, but a complete scrapping of all markets (which I have heard proposed in some corners of the internet) is unlikely, unneeded, and probably unhelpful We need social democracy, expanded government roles and investment in certain fields, stronger environmental protections, and other policies that are either known to work or very likely to work.

bamboozled 4y ago

Do Gen Z people just stop playing the game at some stage. Who is going to enforce this? The rapidly aging majority of the populace? Will they just keep paying higher and higher taxes to support elderly people who likely own much more than they ? I don't think this is a desirable outcome, but I can also see it being an option. Essentially people just checking out from conventional work hard, pay high taxes, have less. Not sure if people will stick with that for too long. I looked up Australian house prices and they're so ridiculous it's hard to even fathom. It's a great place but really, wow?

tablespoon 4y ago
> Do Gen Z people just stop playing the game at some stage. Who is going to enforce this? The rapidly aging majority of the populace? Will they just keep paying higher and higher taxes to support elderly people who likely own much more than they ? Gen Z people will enforce it. No group ever acts as a monolith. For a dumb fictional example, IIRC, all the enforcers in Hunger Games were members of one of the subjugated districts given a better quality of life due to their service. For a real-life example, I believe in Russian and Chinese prisons, the lowest level of enforcement and supervision are actually consists of inmates who've been given privileges by the guards.
- hotpotamus 4y ago
  I mean, if you want a bleaker example, look at the capos in concentration camps.
  - tablespoon 4y ago
    > I mean, if you want a bleaker example, look at the capos in concentration camps. I think that's actually more or less the same system that I was referring to, I just couldn't remember the term.

tablespoon 4y ago

> I genuinely think the economic system will need a complete rethink in the next 20 years or so, because right now it’s completely failing to deliver for my generation. No matter how well we do, the basic life goals of home ownership and starting a family are out of reach for us. Nah, we'll just adopt something like the Logan's Run solution: replace the pension with carrousel and otherwise stay the course.

swalsh 4y ago

"In Sydney, houses are so expensive my whole generation will be practically forced to rent for life" Something i've been thinking about for a while. Gen Z and Millenials are not having children at replenishment. The older folks are living a lot longer, so our population is still going up today, but the 30 year olds who will have children are alive today, we can count them. There's less of them. As older generations start to dwindle, and are forced to move to long term care situations (which to be fair, I think a lot of boomers will resist as hard as possible), the housing supply crunch will probably go down. The real drain on society will be a raising retired population, and a dwindling working population. The older generations outnumbering the younger isn't going to help the younger generations politically either.

themoonisachees 4y ago
Thankfully, lower working-class population means more bargaining power for them, as labour is rarer. But yeah the fact that by 70 years-old most people are considered unfit for work yet the median age of congress is higher than 60 says a lot

throwaway22032 4y ago

Why do you think it "needs" a complete rethink? We've had periods in relatively recent history in which many people simply live in cramped conditions and work dusk until dawn (see Victorian Britain). I think it's far more likely that there's a general reduction in standard of living for everyone below the 90/95/99th percentile. There's not really any pressure to prevent it, people just keep waking up every morning and going to work regardless of how bad it gets. 10-15 years ago when I graduated we had basically the same situation - the bar to win has just been raised. You either aim to be in the top 10/5/1% (adjust as necessary), or you have a life of struggling to pay the bills forever.

mathlover2 4y ago

I think the current economic system needs significant reform, and in many countries massive reform, but a complete scrapping of all markets (which I have heard proposed in some corners of the internet) is unlikely, unneeded, and probably unhelpful We need social democracy, expanded government roles and investment in certain fields, stronger environmental protections, and other policies that are either known to work or very likely to work.