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Hopefully this does not come across as whining (as i managed to escape the debt cycle), but this really seems like they're saying "the investment money train is

Hopefully this does not come across as whining (as i managed to escape the debt cycle), but this really seems like they're saying "the investment money train is over", which is just another slap in the face to my generation, who were already dealt a pretty crummy hand.

marginalia_nu 4y ago
It's hardly uniquely shitty. There's bound to be people lived through the 1906 SF earthquake as a kid, the trenches of WW1 as a young adult (1917), then the Spanish Flu (1918) and then once things started looking up for them, either the 1929 stock market crash and/or the dust bowl came and took it all away again. Of course on the other hand, just because someone has had it worse doesn't make things not bad.
- adhesive_wombat 4y ago
  And if you survived that, you got slapped with WWII. Which in Europe and Asia could have meant complete destruction all around you. In fact, in Asia, it didn't really improve from there for quite some time.
  - marginalia_nu 4y ago
    Yeah, it's basically 20th century Candide for much of that generation.
- bradleyjg 4y ago
  How about being born in 1890 in China? If you lived until 80 you’d have gone through: the first Sino-Japanese war, the Boxer Rebellion, the 1911 Revolution, the Warlord Era, the Northern Expedition and Chinese Civil War, the Second Sino-Japanese War, the second part of the Chinese Civil War, the Communist Purges, the Great Leap Forward, and the beginning of the Cultural Revolution.
tupac_speedrap 4y ago
You aren't really whining, governments 20 years ago were worrying about "boom and bust" cycles but it feels like we only get "bust and bust" cycles at the moment.
- SR2Z 4y ago
  We literally just had a decade of solid growth!
  - qzw 4y ago
    The current boom cycle has been juiced for so long that there’s a whole generation of working people who have no idea what a bust looks like. My wife is one of them, and when I describe to her what things looked like after 2008, she thinks I’m just trying to scare her.
bradleyjg 4y ago
Its really not that crummy a hand. Maybe it’s not as good as being born in 1948, though they had to deal with medical issues that you never will, not to mention the military draft. But that’s not the only point of comparison ever. The destruction in Europe created a period of unprecedented prosperity in the US. The student debt that is endlessly whined about has been transformed over the last decade from real debt to a marginal tax on income. This is the same system that’s used in Australia and the UK. Then there’s the run up in house prices. A real phenomenon but this idea that home ownership is the sine qua non of a happy life is a transitory culture artifact, not any kind of human universal.
- whimsicalism 4y ago
  I would say having housing is pretty important and rents are rising too.
  - bradleyjg 4y ago
    Real income after housing costs is still very high both in historical perspective and as compared to other industrialized nations today. This is like US doctors complaining about malpractice insurance cost. Sure, it’s high, but even after that look at income vs Canada or the UK.
    - freyr 4y ago
      “Sure, we’re moving in the wrong direction, but at least we’re not as bad as those guys yet” isn’t that comforting.
      - bradleyjg 4y ago
        “who were already dealt a pretty crummy hand” Which is it?
    - whimsicalism 4y ago
      Yes, I am not one of those people who is foolish enough to think that it would have been better to have been born in 1940 than today. Of course quality of life and real incomes are higher. But I think in the microscale, it might have been better to be able to invest in this most recent bull run when housing was also lower cost than the next decade or so.
datalopers 4y ago
- theknocker 4y ago
- johnebgd 4y ago
  You can also win the lottery but the odds aren’t in your favor.
qzw 4y ago
I assume you’re fairly young. I know things look pretty grim at the moment, but in the longer term the younger people are going to be in the driver’s seat like few generations before. The demographic trends in most countries forecast aging populations that will face serious labor shortages. So the younger generations should be able to leverage that into better economic outcomes. But the tricky part will be in getting around the institutional barriers that the older generations have and will continue to put up in order to maintain the economic upper hand.
- mstipetic 4y ago
  That makes sense on the surface, but often times it’s not the case. Turns out in a democracy where everyone thinks only of themselves the older and more numerous generations vote for their own pensions and protections and stiff the younger generations.
  - qzw 4y ago
    People always only think of themselves, democracy or not. That's been true since the dawn of time. That's why I said the younger generations will need to overcome some of the institutional barriers. Nothing is going to be just handed to them.
    - 6510 4y ago
      This is incorrect, it is a cultural phenomenon. There has always been a balance between doing constructive things for others depending on how close they are socially and caring for themselves. You have all the emotions, you know how it works. There are tribes where no one cares who gave birth to the kids. We did countless wars and profited at the expense of others but if you fail to account for the soldiers moral it kinda not makes sense for them to make the ultimate sacrifice. We had many religions and some political ideologies where selfishness was not just not admired but frowned upon and undesirable. Most of our quality of life comes from previous generations doing the hard work for us, often intentionally. Try starting from scratch on the "only think of myself" principal and you get something nonsensical like Liberland. Almost everything was just handed to you. You got a good hand of cards. Almost nothing was the result of you taking care of you.
googlryas 4y ago
Are we supposed to feel bad for the Americans with a crummy hand? To most of the rest of the world it sounds like if Prince Harry laments he's not in as high of a point of succession as his father was.
- Sevii 4y ago
  People are complaining that entities in their government are favoring older generations over theirs. The government should not be discriminating based on age when it manipulates the financial markets to benefit retirees over the rest of the population.
  - googlryas 4y ago
    It seems more like people are complaining like "my dad bought a house and raised a family on a single income in 1970 and that's impossible now " That's a complaint about past vs current conditions not about current conditions favoring the elderly.
    - pessimizer 4y ago
      The current conditions favoring the elderly were the policy decisions that quintupled the value of those houses. For me the mistake is that the elderly aren't being favored at all, but the wealthy. The elderly are held up as helpless examples of the wealthy that need to be protected. But instead of protecting the elderly by directly taking care of them, which is obviously communism, it's important to protect the elderly by protecting the wealthy in general. Nobody cares about the broke baby boomers. They get to work at McDonald's until they are automated into homelessness.
      - bradleyjg 4y ago
        It’s getting to the point where it isn’t the boomers but their heirs that will benefit. The least we could do is eliminate the step up basis at death rule …
  - paulmd 4y ago
fredgrott 4y ago
given the Federal reserve handling of the 2008 crisis by re-selling those bad debts and the time they had to do that was infinite everyone had enough of a warning already that when they got to the end of that selling of bad debt the returns on all other asset would be lower as the Federal Reserve tool used implies that economic aspect. This is why the market was turning to real estate past the 2008 crises in the first place, especially among hedge funds in particular.
timmg 4y ago
Funnily enough, I can't guess what generation you are in based on this comment. I'd argue it's pretty bad -- but not the end of the world -- for everyone from Zoomers to Gen X.
mmaunder 4y ago
Unless you're unlucky enough to have a short life, you're going to live through several boom and bust cycles, so get used to it. I've personally lived through the collapse of the LTCM hedge fund and Russian economy while I was at Credit Suisse in 1998, the dot-com bust while I was at eToys.com in early 2000s ($6Bn market cap then delisted from Nasdaq and sold for $2MM to KB Kids), the housing bust of 2007/8, and now the current stock market collapse which is just getting started. Every crisis presents opportunity, provided you're not just spending your life riding everyone else's coat tails. Busts are particularly good for entrepreneurs because we don't have to compete with all the stupid money out there feeding the swarming incompetents. A bust is a time for true innovators to rise from the ashes.
- cowmoo728 4y ago
  The boom and bust business cycle is very different than a protracted run of near zero growth
  - gnicholas 4y ago
    When was there near zero growth? The last decade has seen a boom of VC investment and startup growth. There was the Great Recession before that, following the post 9/11 growth spurt. It seems like the last time there was no growth was perhaps the late 70s?
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - netr0ute 4y ago
    A run of near zero growth is exactly the same as a bust, so I don't know what you're adding.
    - medvezhenok 4y ago
      That's technically not true if you're running a DCA model (which most people do when they invest in the stock market - they invest a percentage of their earnings), since the price at which you invest is better under a bust scenario than a protracted run of zero growth.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

marginalia_nu 4y ago

It's hardly uniquely shitty. There's bound to be people lived through the 1906 SF earthquake as a kid, the trenches of WW1 as a young adult (1917), then the Spanish Flu (1918) and then once things started looking up for them, either the 1929 stock market crash and/or the dust bowl came and took it all away again. Of course on the other hand, just because someone has had it worse doesn't make things not bad.

adhesive_wombat 4y ago
And if you survived that, you got slapped with WWII. Which in Europe and Asia could have meant complete destruction all around you. In fact, in Asia, it didn't really improve from there for quite some time.
- marginalia_nu 4y ago
  Yeah, it's basically 20th century Candide for much of that generation.
bradleyjg 4y ago
How about being born in 1890 in China? If you lived until 80 you’d have gone through: the first Sino-Japanese war, the Boxer Rebellion, the 1911 Revolution, the Warlord Era, the Northern Expedition and Chinese Civil War, the Second Sino-Japanese War, the second part of the Chinese Civil War, the Communist Purges, the Great Leap Forward, and the beginning of the Cultural Revolution.

tupac_speedrap 4y ago

You aren't really whining, governments 20 years ago were worrying about "boom and bust" cycles but it feels like we only get "bust and bust" cycles at the moment.

SR2Z 4y ago
We literally just had a decade of solid growth!
- qzw 4y ago
  The current boom cycle has been juiced for so long that there’s a whole generation of working people who have no idea what a bust looks like. My wife is one of them, and when I describe to her what things looked like after 2008, she thinks I’m just trying to scare her.

bradleyjg 4y ago

Its really not that crummy a hand. Maybe it’s not as good as being born in 1948, though they had to deal with medical issues that you never will, not to mention the military draft. But that’s not the only point of comparison ever. The destruction in Europe created a period of unprecedented prosperity in the US. The student debt that is endlessly whined about has been transformed over the last decade from real debt to a marginal tax on income. This is the same system that’s used in Australia and the UK. Then there’s the run up in house prices. A real phenomenon but this idea that home ownership is the sine qua non of a happy life is a transitory culture artifact, not any kind of human universal.

whimsicalism 4y ago
I would say having housing is pretty important and rents are rising too.
- bradleyjg 4y ago
  Real income after housing costs is still very high both in historical perspective and as compared to other industrialized nations today. This is like US doctors complaining about malpractice insurance cost. Sure, it’s high, but even after that look at income vs Canada or the UK.
  - freyr 4y ago
    “Sure, we’re moving in the wrong direction, but at least we’re not as bad as those guys yet” isn’t that comforting.
    - bradleyjg 4y ago
      “who were already dealt a pretty crummy hand” Which is it?
  - whimsicalism 4y ago
    Yes, I am not one of those people who is foolish enough to think that it would have been better to have been born in 1940 than today. Of course quality of life and real incomes are higher. But I think in the microscale, it might have been better to be able to invest in this most recent bull run when housing was also lower cost than the next decade or so.

datalopers 4y ago

theknocker 4y ago
johnebgd 4y ago
You can also win the lottery but the odds aren’t in your favor.

qzw 4y ago

I assume you’re fairly young. I know things look pretty grim at the moment, but in the longer term the younger people are going to be in the driver’s seat like few generations before. The demographic trends in most countries forecast aging populations that will face serious labor shortages. So the younger generations should be able to leverage that into better economic outcomes. But the tricky part will be in getting around the institutional barriers that the older generations have and will continue to put up in order to maintain the economic upper hand.

mstipetic 4y ago
That makes sense on the surface, but often times it’s not the case. Turns out in a democracy where everyone thinks only of themselves the older and more numerous generations vote for their own pensions and protections and stiff the younger generations.
- qzw 4y ago
  People always only think of themselves, democracy or not. That's been true since the dawn of time. That's why I said the younger generations will need to overcome some of the institutional barriers. Nothing is going to be just handed to them.
  - 6510 4y ago
    This is incorrect, it is a cultural phenomenon. There has always been a balance between doing constructive things for others depending on how close they are socially and caring for themselves. You have all the emotions, you know how it works. There are tribes where no one cares who gave birth to the kids. We did countless wars and profited at the expense of others but if you fail to account for the soldiers moral it kinda not makes sense for them to make the ultimate sacrifice. We had many religions and some political ideologies where selfishness was not just not admired but frowned upon and undesirable. Most of our quality of life comes from previous generations doing the hard work for us, often intentionally. Try starting from scratch on the "only think of myself" principal and you get something nonsensical like Liberland. Almost everything was just handed to you. You got a good hand of cards. Almost nothing was the result of you taking care of you.

googlryas 4y ago

Are we supposed to feel bad for the Americans with a crummy hand? To most of the rest of the world it sounds like if Prince Harry laments he's not in as high of a point of succession as his father was.

Sevii 4y ago
People are complaining that entities in their government are favoring older generations over theirs. The government should not be discriminating based on age when it manipulates the financial markets to benefit retirees over the rest of the population.
- googlryas 4y ago
  It seems more like people are complaining like "my dad bought a house and raised a family on a single income in 1970 and that's impossible now " That's a complaint about past vs current conditions not about current conditions favoring the elderly.
  - pessimizer 4y ago
    The current conditions favoring the elderly were the policy decisions that quintupled the value of those houses. For me the mistake is that the elderly aren't being favored at all, but the wealthy. The elderly are held up as helpless examples of the wealthy that need to be protected. But instead of protecting the elderly by directly taking care of them, which is obviously communism, it's important to protect the elderly by protecting the wealthy in general. Nobody cares about the broke baby boomers. They get to work at McDonald's until they are automated into homelessness.
    - bradleyjg 4y ago
      It’s getting to the point where it isn’t the boomers but their heirs that will benefit. The least we could do is eliminate the step up basis at death rule …
- paulmd 4y ago

fredgrott 4y ago

given the Federal reserve handling of the 2008 crisis by re-selling those bad debts and the time they had to do that was infinite everyone had enough of a warning already that when they got to the end of that selling of bad debt the returns on all other asset would be lower as the Federal Reserve tool used implies that economic aspect. This is why the market was turning to real estate past the 2008 crises in the first place, especially among hedge funds in particular.

timmg 4y ago

Funnily enough, I can't guess what generation you are in based on this comment. I'd argue it's pretty bad -- but not the end of the world -- for everyone from Zoomers to Gen X.

mmaunder 4y ago

Unless you're unlucky enough to have a short life, you're going to live through several boom and bust cycles, so get used to it. I've personally lived through the collapse of the LTCM hedge fund and Russian economy while I was at Credit Suisse in 1998, the dot-com bust while I was at eToys.com in early 2000s ($6Bn market cap then delisted from Nasdaq and sold for $2MM to KB Kids), the housing bust of 2007/8, and now the current stock market collapse which is just getting started. Every crisis presents opportunity, provided you're not just spending your life riding everyone else's coat tails. Busts are particularly good for entrepreneurs because we don't have to compete with all the stupid money out there feeding the swarming incompetents. A bust is a time for true innovators to rise from the ashes.

cowmoo728 4y ago
The boom and bust business cycle is very different than a protracted run of near zero growth
- gnicholas 4y ago
  When was there near zero growth? The last decade has seen a boom of VC investment and startup growth. There was the Great Recession before that, following the post 9/11 growth spurt. It seems like the last time there was no growth was perhaps the late 70s?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- netr0ute 4y ago
  A run of near zero growth is exactly the same as a bust, so I don't know what you're adding.
  - medvezhenok 4y ago
    That's technically not true if you're running a DCA model (which most people do when they invest in the stock market - they invest a percentage of their earnings), since the price at which you invest is better under a bust scenario than a protracted run of zero growth.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]