Posted on 11/13/2025 9:47:16 AM PST by simpson96
Have you heard how young people suffer now?
Scroll TikTok, Instagram, etc., you see the same message: “Young people today can’t get ahead!”
One popular meme says when baby boomers like me were young, “A family could own a home, a car and send their kids to college, all on one income.”
“That’s a fantasy,” says economist Norbert Michel. “We are much better off than we were.”
My new video takes the meme’s claims one by one, starting with “a family could own a home.”
On social media, many young people say things like, “Most people don’t live in houses because it’s too expensive.”
Yes, homes cost more now, but census data show more Americans own their homes now than when I was a kid.
And today’s homes are much bigger and twice as likely to have central air, dishwashers, garbage disposals, etc.
We want more now.
Also, young people can afford more now.
Today, Americans actually spend a smaller percentage of our money on food, clothing and housing than we used to, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics survey data.
“We have a lot more things and we don’t have to work as hard to get them,” says Michel. “Now it’s the norm to go out for dinner.”
When I was young, few people did that.
Few people flew places for vacation. They didn’t have the money, and flying cost much more. Adjusted for inflation, a cross-country flight cost $1,000. Now it’s about $300.
“People did not just go on vacation,” says Michel, “did not fly all across the country.”
But the popular narrative circulates.
It’s part of progressives’ campaign for socialism. They tell young people: Not only does capitalism foster greed, inequality, etc., but it doesn’t even deliver the goods.
Columbia Business School Professor Jeremy Ney tells me, “The game changed on the younger generations. Hard work alone is not enough because the deck is stacked against so many folks.”
“The idea that nobody had to work hard, that everybody had job security,” replies Michel, “is absolutely ridiculous. My dad would’ve laughed at that and should have. Income is definitely higher, jobs are more plentiful, opportunities are more plentiful.”
They sure are. Unemployment today is 4.3%. It was almost twice that when I was young.
Gen Z, overall, is doing better than young people once did. A typical 25-year-old Gen Z-er has annual household income that’s 50% above Baby Boomers’.
On to the meme’s claim that when I was young, “a family could afford to send their kids to college.”
Well, yes, some could, because college was much cheaper then. Tuition in 1963 averaged $10,542 (adjusted for inflation) versus $39,307 now.
Even so, “Most people didn’t go to college,” says Michel. “Roughly half of the labor force didn’t even finish high school.”
Finally, yes, it’s true — a family could own a car. But it wasn’t anything like today’s cars. It wasn’t as safe or comfortable, and it broke down sooner. Today’s cars last more than twice as long as cars did then.
Why do people spread misinformation about today’s generations being worse off when they’re clearly so much better off?
“Politically, it sells,” says Michel. “It makes it really easy for a politician to say, ‘I’m going to fix it.'”
Maybe that’s why President Donald Trump campaigned saying, “We don’t have a great country anymore! We’re going back to the old days … ”
“We always have a tendency to believe in the things that are wrong and that are bad,” says Michel. “That’s unfortunate, because overall most people have been doing much, much better.”
That internet meme should really say:
“Once upon a time, a family who rarely ate out, or flew anywhere, could afford a smaller home, a lousy car, and they didn’t send their kids to college. All on one income.”
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The average house is now huge and lavish compared to the house of 50 years ago. So yes today’s house is less affordable. But the standard from yesteryear is still available and cheap. But scorned upon.
That's a keen observation. rooms were smaller back then, one bathroom per house was common not a lot of central air (we had a AC in the kitchen window), etc.
Want is cured by earning.
Got my first mortgage in 1989. 10% no points. Reason to celebrate!!
Some of this is true but there is no way they will ever understand why and…they would not want to change it back anyway.
A family could own a home, a car and send their kids to college, all on one income.
And the tax burden from all sources was much less - so one person could stay home.
School taxes have grown significantly since 1970, with real spending per student more than quadrupling from around \(\$2,763\) in 1960 to over \(\$13,000\) today
New York is projected to spend over $36,000 per student for the 2024-25 school year
.
Wrong. The internet and his peers raised him.
Nitwit phones for children are a choice you make. They do not just pop out of the ether.
Your children's companions are also, at least partly, a choice that you make as a parent.
And if the argument is that the "other" parent is the one allowing those things, you picked him/her as well.
Raising kids is, as you know, not easy now days. But it never really was. Which is why so many kids have gone wrong over the eons.
Gone are safe neighborhoods, pensions, jobs where you were treated decently, respect for privacy, and just basic simplicity.
Gone is the assumption that a high school grad had common sense, a work ethic, manners, fear of God, etc.
Gone is the sense that being American was OK. Now we are supposed to take the entire world here, as if we had a duty to support them and respect them for being lazy, uneducated, corrupt, dirty, pagans.
They, in turn, are ingrates who deep down hate the US and hate us, but they like our welfare and our self-hating ways.
Rats are to blame for all of it, starting with Wilson.
Many kids I know were raised conservatives and homeschooled. Now in 20s and thirties they a proud tattooed freaks. The internet can win.
Unfortunately, affordable means crime-ridden neighborhood.
When I was a young man I wanted more than I had. So I joined the Coast Guard after high school then went to college and then got a job so I could buy things I wanted.
And go figure. I now have money to buy goods and services I desire.
As an aside. I just went on a date with my lovely woman friend. It was a nothing special pub that just opened up. 50 bucks each for a lousy plate of food and a beer. Who can afford it?
I am glad she is a fellow cheapskate and we love staying home (our own homes) and cooking dinner for eachother.
The about 25% of Gen-Z seems to be reaching for more then they need or can handle. A two bedroom apartment when it is just them because "we need the space for our stuff". Door Dashing food rather then popping a Stouffers in the oven and making a salad for about a quarter of the price. Yeah, learn to cook and you can make it cheaper yet but I am going with what they can do.
And do not even get me started on the "making memories" bunch. Apparently the only way to make memories is by traveling far away and staying in the best resorts.
Financial illiteracy is killing them and that is the ones with good jobs and high salaries from their degrees.
About the only kids that seem to be doing ok are the ones that are, oddly enough, on the bottom. They didn't go to a four year out of state college, they had a job from the time they were out of high school if not earlier, they know how to do things. They will be fine. They got about five lean years but barring some sort of tragedy they will be fine from that point on.
Just my observations.
School taxes have grown significantly since 1970, with real spending per student more than quadrupling from around \(\$2,763\) in 1960 to over \(\$13,000\) today
New York is projected to spend over $36,000 per student for the 2024-25 school year
$2,763 in 1960 is equivalent to $29,647 today.
One other thing to consider… after WWII America was a manufacturing power house when much of the rest of the world was in ruins. This was a great advantage for us that no longer exists.
Seems we have a perfect storm of negatives. We are spiritually bankrupt (the biggest negative) with fewer shared values, the Fed. Reserve Act (1913?) the big banks rule in our debt based economy, evolution taught as fact vs theory, senators elected by popular vote, sexual liberation of the 60’s and the destruction of marriage (the basic unit of government), and as others have mentioned national debt to GDP, offshore manufacturing, influx of foreigners (legal and illegal), miseducation of our youth and college/univ. indoctrination centers, corrupt judges, a lying media, an extremely divided nation with one side lusting for power at any price and the other not entirely sure what they believe or what is worth dying for, the murder of Charlie Kirk (a man who was reaching our disaffected youth and helping them think rationally and spiritually).
If Kamala had been elected it would already be over. If Repubs lose in the mid-terms - Trump’s agenda compromised or halted. Dems will try to impeach him again. What happens if China invades Taiwan and our access to chip production is closed? America faces a very uncertain future. People’s expectations seem unrealistic. We have a big hole we are trying to dig ourselves out of with half the country working to elect people who hate our country and our way of life.
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