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I spend my "political advocacy" bucks on trying to convince older generations around me just how much they and their peers pulled the ladder up behind them. An
by k8svet 3y ago
I spend my "political advocacy" bucks on trying to convince older generations around me just how much they and their peers pulled the ladder up behind them.
And at the same time, I find conversations about money with younger generations to be very hostile (btw, I still consider myself young). Accusations, assumptions, and name-calling start circulating quickly if you dare to ask 'the youth of reddit' as it were, if they understand compound interest, how much money they spend on food delivery, vapes, weed, and booze.
And then there's this pervasive social media messaging that it doesn't matter. Well, if you doom-scroll and ... don't believe? in compound interest, then I guess that is a hard narrative to escape.
- robertlagrant 3y ago> how much money they spend on food delivery, vapes, weed, and booze. The one that is mind-blowing to me is giving money to streamers. Utterly, utterly wasted money.
- nickthegreek 3y agoAgreed. Onlyfans is at least a more honest exchange.
- rhdunn 3y agoLike spending money on other forms of entertainment? Going to the cinema, theatre, a concert, renting a movie, etc. will either cost about the same or more.
- brk 3y agoTrue, and I can't relate directly, but I think part of that is the desire themselves to become streamers with big income streams. If you refuse to support that vision, then that is like admitting it is not possible for yourself?
- jcranmer 3y agoI spend as much money on streamers as I would have spent on a cable TV, were I to actually subscribe to cable TV. It's just an entertainment budget item. If the generation isn't spending that money on traditional forms of entertainment--concerts, cable, movies, sports games--then how is it wasting to spend it on the form of entertainment you don't like?
- zeroonetwothree 3y agoThe money you give to steamers doesn’t enable you to watch them so it’s not exactly comparable to purchasing TV
- rhdunn 3y agoYou can say the same thing about Patreon, donations, etc. Sure, you don't have to pay to watch them but its a way of giving back to them. And on platforms like twitch, being subscribed to a channel does things like remove ads and access to emotes that are part of the live interaction if you want to participate in that.
- robertlagrant 3y agoPaying to remove ads is a bit different though. Paying $100 so a streamer pretends to like you for three seconds is really not healthy.
- SketchySeaBeast 3y agoIf the streamer wasn't making money would they continue streaming?
- c22 2y agoMost of the ones worth watching, I'd guess.
- jcranmer 3y agoYou don't have to tip your waiter at the restaurant. But their salary is fundamentally dependent on you tipping them ~15-20%, so by not tipping them, you are effectively stealing from them. Similarly, not subscribing to people I watch heavily is in effect stealing from them. To be clear, I don't actually like this model of payment. I'd much rather there be a system that could automatically distribute a pool of money in terms of how much I watched.
- 3y ago
- radlad 3y agoIt's the same as supporting any artist / performer, IMO.
- interludead 3y agoStreamer are able to entertain you and give you a good mood for a day... Why not to give something back?
- bigbillheck 3y agoYou've never donated to your local npr/pbs station?
- charlieyu1 3y agoIf it buys happiness, what's the problem?
- robertlagrant 2y agoIf.
- happypumpkin 3y agoI don't watch livestreams but I have Patreon subscriptions to two YouTubers that I enjoy. They focus on fairly niche topics and if everyone thought of paying them as "wasting money" I doubt they'd be able to produce as many good videos as they do just through ad revenue (and since I use adblockers I'm not supporting them in that way).
- clipsy 3y ago> I find conversations about money with younger generations to be very hostile (btw, I still consider myself young). Accusations, assumptions, and name-calling start circulating quickly if you dare to ask 'the youth of reddit' as it were, if they understand compound interest, how much money they spend on food delivery, vapes, weed, and booze. I’m not young, and if you tried to start a “conversation about money” with me in this fashion it would go poorly. Perhaps you just aren’t giving a clear picture of these attempted conversations, but you come across as rather condescending in your own post.
- k8svet 3y agoI would certainly be grateful for suggestions or actionable feedback.
- nytesky 3y agoMy BIL was pretty outspoken BTC and NFT booster at various times (I’m sure he’s back as an advocate with the recent runup, but he may have liquidated at a slump when they bought a house), so it’s possible the PP wasn’t initiating the conversation, but lacked the wisdom to nod politely and pivot to the weather (though nowadays climate and weather can be contentious conversations too!)
- exabrial 3y agoI'm surprised that "you are not young", because this is the usual attitude I receive from Gen-Z: "you're not telling me in the way in which _I_ want to listen, so I'm ignoring you", rather than a mature: "Help me understand what I change in order to be more effective"
- fantyoon 3y agoSeems reasonable to me. Unless there is a good reason to believe that they have valuable information, ignoring condescending people seems worthwhile. How likely is someone to understand you and your problems when they are condescending? I also have a hard time imagining that this is something limited to Gen-Z.
- rsynnott 3y ago
- salawat 3y agoCompound interest is essentially the mind worm we plant to get people to let us spend their money for them. The problem I see with it fundamentally is interest changes the conversation from "there's a thing that needs to get done" to "lets make some money". There's a lot of pointless/ultimately destructive ways to make money. Precious few to get dpne what needs to get done. And I wholeheartedly believe much of society has forgotten that "what is profittable" != "What needs to be done".
- pc86 3y ago> Compound interest is essentially the mind worm we plant to get people to let us spend their money for them. The problem I see with it fundamentally is interest changes the conversation from "there's a thing that needs to get done" to "lets make some money". I'd like to consider myself pretty financially literate and I have no idea what this is supposed to mean.
- sleazebreeze 3y agoI think it means something like: instead of taking your money and putting it to work directly by investing in something tangible and important to you (a friend's business, your own startup, etc), you put it in a massive pool with no responsibility for how its deployed. I get the sentiment and I think it's a socially-conscious investment method, but also a great way to lose all that money and potentially friends when their businesses fail.
- salawat 2y agoYou are correct in your assessment of your meaning. Thoughtless indirection and delegation of capital allocation is essentially abrogation of executive agency in a capitalist system. It is, in fact, undermining in every sense to personal determination. Is it painful? Yes. Does it prevent centralized allocation? Damn straight. Is centralized allocation of capital something to be avoided like the plague? In my opinion, yes. Even at the cost of the inherent pain previously mentioned.
- mattgreenrocks 3y agoGood take. > I spend my "political advocacy" bucks on trying to convince older generations around me just how much they and their peers pulled the ladder up behind them. Yes. And this takes many forms, whether that's hanging on to property long past you need it, staying in jobs past retirement, or falsely believing the current economic climate is at all like what it was 30 years ago. > I find conversations about money with younger generations to be very hostile I can understand how if you grew up around the tech boom years of the 2010s you can believe that a bit of smart gambling is all it takes to generate wealth. In some sense this article is entirely relatable: I once believed if I worked for the right company I could make enough money on my own to buy myself out of the system entirely. This is a conscientious person's version of the gambling fallacy that the article discusses. Really, any sufficiently simple path to wealth that doesn't involve the capital class gets patched out by the system relatively quickly (see Wall St's furor over FAANG engineer salaries).
- a2tech 3y agoHanging onto property long after you need it? Thats crazy. I'm of the belief you should never sell property unless you're in dire straights or you know it's never going to a viable asset (including in this if you have a property in an overheated area that you know is overvalued...then yes, by all means, sell!) You can always find something to do with property to generate income. Once that property is gone, you'll probably never be able to buy it back for what you sold it for
- celestialcheese 3y agoI've got this situation now, and interested to hear your take. Primary home with ~400k in equity, 400k loan @ 2.7%. Moving and bought a new house, and deciding what to do. Market is hot, equity up 300k in 3 years. I always believed in this "don't sell property, you can always generate income" but now that i'm facing this decision, I don't see how to justify keeping it. Cashflow (factoring in expenses/maintenance/vacancy) from renting would be ~$400/mo. If you include principal paydown, then it'd be ~$2000/mo. Selling the property, and taking the equity seems like the best option. Either a) rolling it into the new house or b) investing it in nearly risk free muni's. Both of those would net me more than keeping the property with a significantly better risk adjusted return. If you live in a place with wild property appreciation over the last 4 years (most of the country), then I don't really see how it makes sense to keep a property. What am I missing?
- nytesky 3y agoFood delivery, car services, Uber of X — they grew up with an expectation of life easing services that were way underpriced and subsidized by VC money: https://hbr.org/2016/07/the-internet-of-stuff-your-mom-wont-do-for-you-anymore https://hbr.org/2016/07/the-internet-of-stuff-your-mom-wont-... But now they took the ball away, and everything is getting suddenly really expensive just as they are moving into independence and need money for housing, marriage, maybe even kids. But the habits of having life greased by all these services is hard to walk away from… how many GenX would give up having a washing machine and microwave? Vaping and weed, well they are literally addictive and a scourge all around…
- dfxm12 3y agoWhen talking about vapes and booze specifically, the defensiveness is a symptom of addiction. Gambling is addictive, too, but unlike with booze and nicotine, you only have to go as far as your pocket & your phone is open for bets 24/7. You phone will also never deny you because it knows you've had enough. Maybe doom scrolling is addictive to this level too. But the point is, we, and especially young people, are being targeted for addictive substances in a way that Joe Camel could only dream of, and yes, addiction is hard to escape.
- k8svet 3y agoI'm reluctant to say this since it's already been suggested once that I'm being condescending, but wrt to food delivery services, I don't know if it's addiction or some form of entitlement but something is going on there. What a phenomena. So many people I know complains about DoorDash, etc, and keep using it, and insist their life demands they use it.
- dfxm12 3y agoWhen talking about gambling, whether it's sports betting, robinhood, etc. I have no doubts it is addiction. The article suggests this, too. I don't personally know anyone who uses doordash regularly, but I've seen a handful of commenters on hn complaining about doordash while pretending there's no possible other way to get their food (even after getting possible alternatives). Just wait for doordash to come up in the news again and see if you can't ask someone anonymously about it here :)
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- futureshock 3y agoI mean it seems a lot better than driving to get takeout while drunk or high. Seems like a real improvement on the past.
- 3y ago
- The_Colonel 3y ago> I spend my "political advocacy" bucks on trying to convince older generations around me just how much they and their peers pulled the ladder up behind them. This generation war thing seems strange. Like, do you accuse the people of wrong things they did personally? Or do you make them responsible for other people's decisions? What's exactly the point? Instill a feel of collective guilt? Seems like setting ourselves up for the same kind of harsh critique from the coming generations. I doubt they will look upon us (the current young people) kindly, and "boomers did it" likely won't work as an explanation for why we still indulge ourselves in material luxury, airline travel etc.
- impomura 3y ago>Like, do you accuse the people of wrong things they did personally? They voted for policies that pulled the ladder up behind them, are they not responsible of their vote?
- The_Colonel 3y agoUS is a two-party system. At best you can vote for the lesser evil. Or vote independent, but that's mostly a lost vote. Or not vote at all. How can an individual absolve themselves of this guilt?
- bluefirebrand 3y agoThis has happened everywhere, not just the US
- k8svet 3y agoFor the first part, no, it's not about guilt. Er, well, I 'll try to avoid speculating on the psychology on their side, but no matter how much data I show my well-meaning, "liberal" parents, they simply seem unable to accept how different circumstances are facing younger generations compared to them raising a 2-kid, family-vacay-ever year, comfortably middle-class family on one salary. As for the second paragraph, I guess I'll just say, I think you're probably completely spot on.
- stetrain 3y agoFor most young people, interest rates on savings accounts have been effectively 0% for most of their lives. That has changed within the last few years but may also be temporary. Compounding gains in investments still work out in the long run, but an older generation trying to tell the younger one about putting money in a savings account and letting it earn compound interest has been out of touch for a couple of decades now.
- chii 3y ago> an older generation trying to tell the younger one about putting money in a savings account and letting it earn compound interest i have not heard a single older person saying this. Every one of them says to invest in assets, not bank interest.
- stetrain 3y agoI heard it from parents, grandparents, high school teachers and college professors. And the comment I replied to specifically mentioned "compound interest"
- snovymgodym 3y agoI've heard the savings/bond/CD advice from older people who were working during the Volcker years.
- kjkjadksj 3y agoAll the petty spending is so small in comparison to your rent. Cut out the vape and save $16 a week all you want, thats not making or breaking anything. This is the classic “5 dollar latte” fallacy: that older generations think the youth is foolish for spending $5 on coffee, while not knowing thats an absolute drop in the bucket relative to lifes big costs today, and also probably returning more than $5 in not feeling totally depressed and miserly.
- anthonypasq 3y agoI think the issue is actually bigger than this. The economy seems to continue to be white-hot despite everyone claiming its doing terrible and everything costs too much etc. people are eating out more than ever before, getting delivery more than ever before, and vacations are also booming. consumption is up no matter how you slice it. i think a lot of the younger generation have completely given up on the idea that they are ever going to own a house and instead of saving for that are just blowing it on food, booze, vacations etc.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- dazc 3y agoI'm in the UK and just before the banking crisis you could get a decent house for £50k with a 120% self-certified mortgage. These are the same people who often resort to the coffee/netflix argument. £50k is now a deposit.
- the_snooze 3y agoI think that's too defeatist of a view. The boring reality is that small things done consistently over time seriously add up. It's true for health and exercise. It's true for relationships. It's true for finances. A $5 pick-me-up every now and then isn't a bad thing by itself. But if it becomes a daily habit, then you're missing out on other choices with better long-run returns. The immediate costs are small, but the eventual opportunity costs are huge. Younger people have a resource older people don't: time. That's time for habits to compound. May as well choose good ones to compound, because you're never getting that time back again.
- hn_throwaway_99 3y agoTotally agree. I do feel like younger generations have much more difficult circumstances, especially when it comes to class mobility. Primarily education, housing and healthcare are just much more expensive and out-of-reach if you weren't born to wealthy parents, and the number of jobs where you can "work your way up from the mail room" has drastically shrunk. At the same time, I see a pretty pervasive attitude among young people that boils down to "if I don't do well, it's society's fault". It's like this overwhelming victim mentality, like a sense of learned helplessness that affects areas of their life even where they are not helpless. Not only is this a bad attitude for society, it also becomes ultimately unhelpful for the individual as well. Obviously I see where a lot of this attitude comes from (see the first paragraph), and yes, I'm speaking in very broad generalizations that don't apply to everyone. But it just feels like this big shift where a lot of people feel the only path to success is, essentially, luck or some sort of scheme.