I have in-laws who grew up in the 50s and 60s. Life was simple — get a college degree, get hired by a big company like IBM, rise up through the ranks, get that sweet pension, Buy a cheap house which soars in value, retire to Florida with millions in your portfolio, and a steady on-going income for life. No special effort required. Basic, simple decisions. They did it. Anyone can do it. If you didn’t do it, I guess you’re dumb.
For them, the world has not changed, and everything they did can still be done by anyone today. I try to tell them that things have changed, but they think I’m one of the dumb ones.
I grew up in the 70s and 80s. I consider myself quite lucky. Not as lucky as they were, but I was fortunate. I’ve done OK and I can’t really complain. But I don’t have millions and I don’t have a big fat pension from a major corporation.
My kids are unlucky. Their world is a lot tougher. I feel bad for them but they work hard and they do the best they can with what has been dealt to them in the 21st century.
Meanwhile, my in-laws express amazement that the kids haven’t bought a sweet house in a major US city yet. San Francisco maybe. Or NYC. Why aren’t they living there? What’s the problem? Are they stupid?
Those same naysayers are here on FR and they don’t listen.
They just think every younger person is a lazy complainer.
Societal timing, which one has zero control over, is huge for quality of life.
The reason is globalism.
In the 50s-60s, Americans had to compete with other Americans.
In the 70s-80s, Americans had to compete with other 1st world countries.
Today, Americans have to compete with ever third worlder, on both sides of the border.
It’s a race to the bottom and the uniparty is laughing all the way to the bank.
Your In-Laws appear to have a superiority complex, which really means they remain skittish and insecure even now.
Perhaps even somewhat envious that others are living a less predictable, less regimented kind of life.
Again, this is something you really can hang on Reagan and what was standard right wing economic thinking in the 1970s-2000s: free trade, deregulation, abolition of pensions for DC plans, etc. I’m a bit more neutral as everything has its trade offs.
By the 1970s we were a sorry mess because the rest of the world was back on its feet and had exposed our flaws badly.
The 1980s saw a resurgence that was driven largely by the deregulation of three key industries: trucking, railroads, and telecommunications.
I think it’s been mostly downhill since then, with ever-growing parts of our economy built on costly government mandates and fascist government-business practices.
get a college degree - still needed and possible, and with good enough test scores you can easily get merit scholarships, or if needed, needs based ones.
get hired by a big company like IBM - you can still do this and start earning $100K straight out of college if you get a degree in something worthwhile like engineering or computer science and not women studies.
rise up through the ranks - easy to do, maybe easier than ever since no one actually wants to work anymore.
get that sweet pension - today you would get sweet stock options and 401K matching.
Buy a cheap house which soars in value - you can still buy cheap houses, just not in the city, you have to buy them in the country the same as your grandparents did. Those homes they bought that “soared” in value did so because the cities grew massively and swallowed up the cheap rural areas our grandparents built their homes in. This is what made them soar in value. But everyone today wants to buy in the brand new subdivisions or worse yet in the hip inner city highrises.
retire to Florida with millions in your portfolio - can still do that today with the stock options and 401K you collected along the way.
and a steady on-going income for life - see above.
Things are hard if you make them hard. If you choose to go to an over priced college vs a cheap one, if you get a useless degree instead of a useful one, if you buy in an expensive area verses the country ect
Your post sums up nicely why Gen X on down have a grudge against Boomers. There are a lot of Boomers who get it, but there are even more who simply can’t understand why the later generations haven’t arrived at the same level of contentment they did. Golly, it must be laziness or something.