You are silly.
Median housing size:
https://www.businessinsider.com/houses-median-square-footage-chart-2015-6
And that doesn’t begin to cover the materials and amenities.
College costs? Yeah, up because Joe Taxpayer’s been stuck footing the bill and degrees have similarly been larded up with all sorts of bells and whistles and pathetically lowered standards.
And average returns have pretty much averaged out over time: https://www.macrotrends.net/2526/sp-500-historical-annual-returns
Do you even have any idea what they are based on?
And evidence re: work? kids regularly started with paper routes, lawn mowing, babysitting and such as pre-teens, were regular after-school workers in their teens, and if they didn’t have merit scholarships or a benefactor for college, working their way through that as well.
It seems more like you’re hypersensitive to any perceived slight of the Boomers....even though I was disagreeing with the Millenials’ whining about Boomers. That was the whole point of the thread, yet you just HAD to argue. OK. Let’s go.
Yes houses are bigger than they used to be....for everybody. The average house price in 1965/1970/1975 was a significantly smaller multiple of the average annual income in those years than it is now. Much lower in fact. Houses are more expensive in relative terms now than they were then - much more expensive.
College tuition
“In 1980, the price to attend a four-year college full-time was $10,231 annually—including tuition, fees, room and board, and adjusted for inflation—according to the National Center for Education Statistics. By 2019-20, the total price increased to $28,775. That’s a 180% increase.”
Its not even close. Tuition is vastly more expensive in real terms now than it was 40 years ago.
Here are the average annual returns by year for 40 years.
1980 31.74%
1981 -4.70%
1982 20.42%
1983 22.34%
1984 6.15%
1985 31.24%
1986 18.49%
1987 5.81%
1988 16.54%
1989 31.48%
1990 -3.06%
1991 30.23%
1992 7.49%
1993 9.97%
1994 1.33%
1995 37.20%
1996 22.68%
1997 33.10%
1998 28.34%
1999 20.89%
2000 -9.03%
2001 -11.85%
2002 -21.97%
2003 28.36%
2004 10.74%
2005 4.83%
2006 15.61%
2007 5.48%
2008 -36.55%
2009 25.94%
2010 14.82%
2011 2.10%
2012 15.89%
2013 32.15%
2014 13.52%
2015 1.38%
2016 11.77%
2017 21.61%
2018 -4.23%
2019 31.21%
2020 18.02%
2021 28.47%
The returns were better from 1980-2000 than post 2000.
You say Boomer kids had jobs. Do you think that was the only generation that had jobs as kids? I had jobs as a kid. That was pretty normal. A lot still do.