Posted on 01/03/2024 10:19:29 AM PST by BJ1
A real estate agent on social media has given some stats comparing the costs of housing (ownership and rent), college education and gas vs. the income in years 1970 and 2023.
It sure looks like the American Dream is unattainable for a substantial portion of the Gen Z generation.
Nixon promised getting off the gold standard was a temporary measure.
We were so stupid to believe him.
>>>I’d seriously check those figures as people on TikTok tend to lie and exaggerate for clicks<<<
I get that. However I tend to believe this man as I have watched another interesting speech on this topic by none other than Elizabeth Warren. Before she became a politician she wrote a book called the TWO INCOME TRAP. She was comparing data from 1970 to around 2003. Despite the higher rate of two income households, the disposable income fell from 50% in 1970 to 25% in 2003.
I’m not a mathematician, but I’m pretty sure keeping 50% of your wages in 1970 was pretty awesome. MAYBE YOU WEREN’T KEEPING 50% as a young person just starting out, but what about 30, 40 and 50 year olds in 1970?
I did a quick YouTube search of her speech that I watched and can’t find it. However here she is giving an interview about that same book and it’s only a five minute segment. Recall she was a professor at this time and not a politician.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnH2eJAvK84&ab_channel=MassachusettsSchoolofLawatAndover
I’d be thrilled to give a conservative analysis of the changes over time but I have not seen one.
Quite a few companies today do not offer a pension plan — hey, that’s what Social Security is for, right?
Older people who worked for big companies did get nice pensions back in the day. Young people today are less likely to get that. You get a 401(k) instead, which is nice but it’s not a pension.
For better or worse, companies used to have middle management layers. Maybe you start off in the proverbial mailroom, but if you showed promise, there were slots above that you could move into. But today, most companies have been hollowed out. You have grunts at the bottom who have no future, and high-paid people at the top who make all the decisions. If your company needs to hire another highly-paid decision maker, they are most likely to hire someone from another company rather than promote a grunt within their own corp.
It’s always been a pyramid, with lots more jobs at the bottom, and fewer people at the top. But I think the pyramid is sloped a lot more acutely today and it’s harder to climb that ladder.
Older people got a permanent 20% drop in value for their lifetime of savings with no potential for pay increases, just in the past 3 years. Much more if they want to eat.
>>>Older people got a permanent 20% drop in value for their lifetime of savings with no potential for pay increases, just in the past 3 years. Much more if they want to eat.<<<
not to be a downer, but isn’t this just the tip of the iceburg? How can the democrats keep going into debt at the rate of $2 trillion a year without offsetting that debt through inflation? Cause 100% inflation over 5 years and the debt is substantially reduced as a share of the GDP. And why stop at 100% inflation. Why not make it 300% and really shrink the debt relative to GDP.
fun fact half of US Dollars are held by foreigners. So I can see people who would think it’s a good idea to inflate our way out of this mess we are in.
Your generation came of age during a great economy. You forgot Jimmy Carter? By then we had a house and Hubby had to drive for work, a company vehicle, we didn't own a car of our own.
And your generation took the birth control pill Nobody that I knew used the pill. It had side affects back then.
and for a short while legitimately had twice the earning power of the prior generations. I wish.
That worked for a while until all the women in the workforce pushed wages down. That became a necessity in cities. I lived in suburbs/rural area and the Moms were stay-at home Moms. And no, women were not paid less although libs love to push that lie. How many male secretaries were there? Waitresses? Nurses? Teachers? etc.
Now two incomes is a sad necessity for most young families. That depends on what they're buying.
Your generation also went wild on unconventional behavior. Right and wrong was muddled. You believed what the press was pushing? They weren't anymore truthful back then than they are now. Yes, they can and did influence future behavior.
Divorce became commonplace in the 70s and latch key kids became a real thing. Yup. The press and culture convinced women to "find themselves". The feminist movement did a lot of damage, pushed by the press and Hollywood.
I recall being a teenager (I was born in 1970) listening to Boomers being exasperated with their children not listening to them. As a smart mouth teen I would ask them if they would ever behave like this when they were young and they would almost always look at me like I was the most stupid person in the world. They would say of course not, my parents would have killed me. Then I would give them the look like, well why don’t you do the same. And suddenly they looked rather small.My oldest came home from school spouting that I couldn't spank him anymore because he could have me arrested. He was in 2nd grade. He also told me that his teacher said to throw my cigarettes in the toilet....he did and got spanked. I handed him the phone to turn me in and he hung it up.
You blame a lot on "Boomers" without taking into account the power of Hollywood and the press, even the schools. It's called manipulation and it still works today, you know, like TikTok posts......
I wouldn’t trust anything lying fake Indian Warren has to say. It’s a shame you do.
I retired 1/1/2023. I had a decent pension in my portfolio.
look at another post where pelosi and mcconnell, et. al., are seeding the ‘markets’ to take out our money.
America destroyed, not by a foreign enemy, but from within by our ruling class, i.e., the uniparty/deepstate. we have only ourselves to blame, since it is we who have continually elected them.
Me, too, but Gen Z workers won't.
The thing is, I didn't have to divert income to savings to get the pension; it was effectively a longevity bonus.
I contributed to my 401(k), too, and that did take salary out of action until my retirement. For Gen Z workers who won't have access to a pension, diverting salary to a 401(k) will hurt their lifestyle, especially when young.
That said, I think that Gen Z workers want to be more mobile, so a defined pension doesn't fit their mindset.
-PJ
When He broke the third seal, I heard the third living creature saying, “Come.” I looked, and behold, a black horse; and he who sat on it had a pair of scales in his hand. And I heard something like a voice in the center of the four living creatures saying, “A quart of wheat for a denarius, and three quarts of barley for a denarius; and do not damage the oil and the wine.”
Revelation 6:5-6
That said, I think that Gen Z workers want to be more mobile, so a defined pension doesn't fit their mindset.
Yeah. 33 years at my last place of employment helped.
The house across from me sold for $150k. 3 bdrm 1 ba. There are houses available, You just have to get out of high COL areas. In 1990, I got an Accounting degree for free. The company paid for it.
The problem with Gen Z is they value Weed and their “mental health” over everything. They don’t want roommates because “mental health”. They have to drive a new car because same. They have to take expensive vacations because same. It’s amazing how many of them are on anti-anxiety benzos
This comparison is bogus. Newer houses today are huge mansions compared to the little tract houses that were common in 1950. College funding is a scam, but it is taxpayers, not the students, who are stuck with the worst of it now. Lots of states now offer free community college anyway—and anyone who could make good use of a 4-year degree can afford to then finish up at State U (e.g., by working and taking two or three classes at a time) after that without needing a penny in loans.
“””””We can genuinely thank the “Boomers” for the problems we have now. They were indoctrinated in colleges. They voted and got all these socialist programs for themselves. Then, the worst, they got in power via he bureaucracy. While the conservative “Boomers” started businesses or went in to the private sector, the liberals spread like a cancerous infection in every government agency they could.”””””
The first presidential election in which all boomers were finally old enough to vote for the president was in 1984.
I think that you don’t know much about how America got like this.
Cherry please don’t take what I say personal to you. Obviously there are exceptions when you generalize.
I had Boomer parents and my friends growing up mostly had boomer parents. My experience is that they were definitely different from their own parents generation. And of course not everyone of them.
My dad bought a 2,000 sf home in 1968 for $24K.
Sold it in 1991 for $215K. Hell of a return.
Ahhhh ...
Another exercise in the stupidity of generational stereotyping.
The left loves to create division ... by age, by race, by ethnicity, by location ... Got problems? BLAME THE OTHER GUY!!!
I (boomer) showed up at my rather well known college in the fall of 1970.
There were leftists rioting in the streets surrounding the campus.
Poor me—I just wanted to get a decent education so I could get a decent job.
The “greatest generation” parented the rioting monsters.
Yep
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