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We're not comparing apples with apples though. Boomers were born into a fortunate timeline where they did everything they were supposed to do and were MASSIVELY

We're not comparing apples with apples though. Boomers were born into a fortunate timeline where they did everything they were supposed to do and were MASSIVELY rewarded by a factor of 10x. Millennials have experienced the opposite and have watched as Zoomers get it even worse than us in many cases. All things are not equal with this one. Yes we can assume millennials will drift right like every generation does, but boomers have never experienced what it's like to be told just do X, Y, and Z and you'll be all set only to come out 1/10th what their parents were able to accomplish, despite expending more effort. That is not something you just forget about because after waiting 40 years you finally get to flip a $2m property. Boomers never had to learn that lesson, millennials at least understand it presently.

dragonwriter 3y ago
> boomers have never experienced what it’s like to be told just do X, Y, and Z and you’ll be all set only to come out 1/10th what their parents were able to accomplish Neither have millennials. The class of millenials doing worse than similarly situated members of previous generations (and still by far less of a margin than your hyperbolic 1/10th as well) are largely men without a college degree – overall, millenials are only slightly below the performance of earlier generations at similar ages, but the education gap in economic performance has widened and the gender gap narrowed.
- sam0x17 3y ago
  "Performance" is relative to the times. Back in the 60s good performance meant a union job with a pension and building a house by 25. None of the things in that sentence even exist anymore for the vast majority of people. If I were to say "hey let's buy or build a house right now" you would rightly say "that's a bad idea at the moment", so the opportunity that boomers had simply does not exist present day. My uncle was a grocer back in the day at a local grocery store, and he is able to live completely off of his pension that is still paying him some 30 years later. Those kinds of opportunities simply do not exist anymore. Companies don't even exist that long anymore, and if they do, they probably spend all their money and effort lobbying against unions and limiting or ending any existing pension programs they may have once had. The only exception being federal jobs and workplaces that have managed to unionize despite historic anti-union sentiment thanks to Reagan et al.
  - dragonwriter 3y ago
    > "Performance" is relative to the times. The performance I refer to is relative to inflation-adjusted dollars. Relative to the times, obviously, people at every time do exactly as well. You would be measuring a thing against itself. > Back in the 60s good performance meant a union job with a pension and building a house by 25. Most people the 60s didn’t build a house, and, if they did, didn’t do it by 25. > None of the things in that sentence even exist anymore for the vast majority of people. Private sector union jobs and private sector pensions are far less common, and that’s a big reason why Millenials (and Gen Xers) without a degree are worse off than comparable Boomers and earlier. On the other hand, college educated Millenials (the majority) are doing better than college educated Boomers, despite being a larger share of their generation.
- sam0x17 3y ago
  > Relative to the times, obviously, people at every time do exactly as well. You would be measuring a thing against itself. My point is that "relative to the times" captures a lot of the crucial things worthy of comparison. The fact that menial, what would now be considered "gig" jobs, in the 60s and 70s all were W2 and all had unions and pensions, many of which are still paying out to this day, is a gargantuan difference to how things are now. It's something you can't simply ignore. Imagine an Amazon warehouse worker making enough money working fair hours to build a house and then live off their pension for 30 years. It would be physically impossible in our current timeline. In this timeline, even tech workers don't have benefits that will last beyond their 2.5 year tenure at whatever startup, and those lucky enough to have equity have no guarantee that it will be worth anything for more than a few years. The favorable circumstances of yesteryear are gone, and that's the elephant in the room that any charitable analysis of this absolutely needs to quantify and address.

dragonwriter 3y ago

> boomers have never experienced what it’s like to be told just do X, Y, and Z and you’ll be all set only to come out 1/10th what their parents were able to accomplish Neither have millennials. The class of millenials doing worse than similarly situated members of previous generations (and still by far less of a margin than your hyperbolic 1/10th as well) are largely men without a college degree – overall, millenials are only slightly below the performance of earlier generations at similar ages, but the education gap in economic performance has widened and the gender gap narrowed.

sam0x17 3y ago
"Performance" is relative to the times. Back in the 60s good performance meant a union job with a pension and building a house by 25. None of the things in that sentence even exist anymore for the vast majority of people. If I were to say "hey let's buy or build a house right now" you would rightly say "that's a bad idea at the moment", so the opportunity that boomers had simply does not exist present day. My uncle was a grocer back in the day at a local grocery store, and he is able to live completely off of his pension that is still paying him some 30 years later. Those kinds of opportunities simply do not exist anymore. Companies don't even exist that long anymore, and if they do, they probably spend all their money and effort lobbying against unions and limiting or ending any existing pension programs they may have once had. The only exception being federal jobs and workplaces that have managed to unionize despite historic anti-union sentiment thanks to Reagan et al.
- dragonwriter 3y ago
  > "Performance" is relative to the times. The performance I refer to is relative to inflation-adjusted dollars. Relative to the times, obviously, people at every time do exactly as well. You would be measuring a thing against itself. > Back in the 60s good performance meant a union job with a pension and building a house by 25. Most people the 60s didn’t build a house, and, if they did, didn’t do it by 25. > None of the things in that sentence even exist anymore for the vast majority of people. Private sector union jobs and private sector pensions are far less common, and that’s a big reason why Millenials (and Gen Xers) without a degree are worse off than comparable Boomers and earlier. On the other hand, college educated Millenials (the majority) are doing better than college educated Boomers, despite being a larger share of their generation.
sam0x17 3y ago
> Relative to the times, obviously, people at every time do exactly as well. You would be measuring a thing against itself. My point is that "relative to the times" captures a lot of the crucial things worthy of comparison. The fact that menial, what would now be considered "gig" jobs, in the 60s and 70s all were W2 and all had unions and pensions, many of which are still paying out to this day, is a gargantuan difference to how things are now. It's something you can't simply ignore. Imagine an Amazon warehouse worker making enough money working fair hours to build a house and then live off their pension for 30 years. It would be physically impossible in our current timeline. In this timeline, even tech workers don't have benefits that will last beyond their 2.5 year tenure at whatever startup, and those lucky enough to have equity have no guarantee that it will be worth anything for more than a few years. The favorable circumstances of yesteryear are gone, and that's the elephant in the room that any charitable analysis of this absolutely needs to quantify and address.