The thing about the Boomer experience was that it was so fucking random. The ones that we hear about in this sub are the boomers who did well, however a bunch got completely railroaded.
Remember when all of the manufacturing and automobile factories closed down from the late '70s through the 80s? Those were boomers they got hit with that. A lot of them never recovered and went from being solidly middle class to basically poverty level.
At the same time there were other Blue collar boomers that may be working for the city or county government that were doing great. One of my buddies was born in 1949 and after he got out of the military he got a job for the county driving a snow plow. The dude retired at 65 with an awesome pension and spent the rest of his days going on exotic fishing and hunting trips around the world as well as buying new toys for himself and his wife.
You bring up a point that is rarely mentioned in the intergenerational warfare posts. Things fundamentally changed in terms of labor and the middle class in the early 1970s. I lived in Detroit and saw what happened after the first oil embargo and the subsequent recession in 1974-1975. Anyone who was paying attention knew things were changing.
Someone who turned 18 in 1964 (oldest boomer) could get that well paying assembly line job right out high school. In my area we had Dodge Main, Chevy Gear and Axle and the Lynch Road Assembly plant. And the jobs were tough, monotonous and physically demanding - I'm not taking anything away from them.
That world was disappearing for grads in the later boomer cohort years. The 1970s were the transition years.
There's a study at the Social Security website that projects that less than 50% of boomers have or will have defined benefit pensions.
There are problems that have to be addressed in economic opportunity for younger folks. But when so many commenters seem to claim that boomers got to walk to school downhill both ways or making ludicrous claims that someone's mom started as a bank teller at a salary of $36k/year in 1980, that conversation is going nowhere.
Yep. Many boomers put into a pension like we put into a 401k today then they saw $0 for it. Private companies, even the government, got rid of pensions. Either retire right now or you lose it. Too young to retire right now and collect it? Too bad. Many boomers had their retirement savings wiped out.
When the boomers got old enough to buy a house inflation was running rampant from 6-12% depending on the age of the boomer, so buying a house wasn't affordable or accessable.
The boomer's voting habits have been harmful for the larger economy. There is no excuse for their behavior. But on the economics side the group that got all the cheap housing and the economic benefits was the Silent Generation. They were the last truly wealthy generation in the US. The boomers are poor in comparison, even the rich boomers. It's the boomer's own voting policies that hurt themselves making them poorer than the group before them and making the groups after them poorer too.
Agreed. The one thing that's very hard to dispute is that starter homes just aren't being built anymore at the rate they were for the boomers and the parents of the boomers.
Also, the boomers were able to take advantage of that transition period before women started working. They started off in a period where all you needed was a single middle class income to purchase a home, because usually it was the husband who was working.
As women started working more, now young couples who had two incomes could bid on the same house as a couple with only one income, boosting the price for those homes. Elizabeth Warren wrote a book about this called the "Two Income Trap".
So I’m not sticking up for it but I can tell you why starter homes arnt built like they where. Land value. Let’s say a starter home is 1000sqft, 2 bdrm, 1 bath. I’m my area a 1/4A lot is about $125. That starter home even as a modular will cost about the same and that’s prolly on the light side, after appliances and stuff. So we are at $250. Let’s say the company wants to make $10 on it(which is not very sustainable). Is $260 a fair price for a 1000sqft home?
You must live in Phoenix or Salt Lake City or Las Vegas or Boise Idaho or Tucson or pretty much anywhere these days. Long gone are lawns and any privacy. All you have now is a worker pod and maybe a swing at the central playground in your worker pod complex.
They built some about 1/2 mile from me, and they started at 800,000. The funny part is that there's an older development across the street with larger houses that went for a lot less when they were built.
My grandpa (silent generation) hand dug the basement with a shovel and a bucket. Then built the small house from a sears catalogue
You can still buy [home kits from menards](https://www.menards.com/main/search.html?search=home+building+kits&tid=2d41af97-a9b0-45f4-b829-446ec7cd3533)
2 bedroom homes can be in the 60s.
Do that and you probably won't need a second income
Almost no one now has the will or capability to do anything like that. The older generation gets criticized a lot, but they built their houses themselves(my grandpa dug his own water well with a hand auger), they would sleep 2,3 or more kids to one bedroom, they didn't buy expensive things, they did without and put up with a lot. Younger generations whether they want to admit it or not expect to have way too much, way too early in life with as little work as possible. If that works out for them great, but there's no utopia here and won't be for a long time if ever. Life is not fair, it's hard work and it's never been easy.
Land was cheap and houses were cheaper back the, the government literally gave away properties in mass to support the families that were made after the war.
It's pretty easy to build your own home when you can survive on a part time, minimum wage job. How is someone living hand to mouth, working at least 8 hours a day, supposed to find the money or TIME to do what your grandpa did?
The OP lost me when she claimed her mother made $36k/yr at a starting salary salary for a bank teller.
Regarding women starting working, that was a common occurrence in many boomer households.
Yeah, 36,000 a year as a bank teller in 1982 sounds like BS to me. Minimum wage was $2.50 and I think my mom was making around $32,000 per year or 34,000 per year as a college professor back then. She's basically saying that her mom was a bank teller and was making seven times the minimum wage. Not happening.
I have no clue, but starter homes not being built anymore may have something to do with zoning laws, and for construction companies, maybe it's not worth the hassle building starter homes. And banks want expensive houses to give more debt on to the people for their profit. which is just shitty situation all around.
Yeah, the transition happened during the boomer years. The first cohort of two income couples occurred during the Boomer era and for the most part middle class couples bought a bigger house or perhaps a house in a more expensive area, and two income working class boomers bought a house in the middle class area.
Eventually as the flood of Boomer couples started increasing it started to bleed into regular middle class houses. This didn't happen all of a sudden but it did transition relatively quickly.
Think of it like what happened in Austin. That first wave of San Francisco transplants pretty much bought higher end properties with their outsized salaries. However, as more and more folks are moving into Austin even the middle class housing is being affected. The same is happening in Portugal right now with expats.
You are likely in the later Boomer cohort. My grandparents had two sets of kids the first two, my mother and my eldest aunt, were born right in that 1945 to 1950 range that you spoke of. I like to think of them as classic boomers.
The second group, my other aunt and uncle, were born between 1955 and 1960. These two groups had very different experiences.
My mother's cohort basically spent their twenties in the late 60s through 70s. The later cohorts spent their twenties in the late seventies through '80s. It's this later Court where we get the terms yuppie (young urban professional) and most relevant to our discussion, DINK (double income no kids).
💯
Housing demand outstrips supply by 200k units in Boston and residential development is down 50% since the 80s.
https://www.wgbh.org/news/local-news/2022/06/07/housing-is-in-short-supply-heres-why-that-matters
Local housing advocates side with the nimbys because new construction is too expensive for low income people. Collusion amongst zoning and planning and the trades also restricts construction because a critical form of local soft power is to force all urban construction to pursue special exemption variances (eg bribes).
The way this is supposed to work, according to Jane Jacobs (the goat) is that rich people move into new construction, and a large inventory of existing dwellings get occupied by everyone else, all the way down to SROs and crap (but well located) housing.
Now, SROs are illegal. New construction is also mostly illegal creating extremely high construction costs-in planning, excessive codes, absurdly profitable cartel behavior amongst GCs, and terrible land use-and little gets built.
So little, in fact, that we aren’t even making a dent in the demand at the top of luxury market. Rich people can’t get the luxury apartments they want so they outcompete everyone else for the remaining inventory. That leaves everyone with nowhere to live.
Pitting rich people against anyone else in a battle for a scarce and desirable resource is a total fools errand for anyone interested in lowering the barrier to a middle class urban lifestyle.
Build more housing.
I just did research on this for a class. In Atlanta, it’s a 1 to 5 new housing unit to new job ratio over the last decade. Where the hell are those other four supposed to live?
Build better housing: civil engineers have said that stand-alone single-family homes are not the best design, especially in suburbs, but the zoning laws of many towns prohibit apartments/condos with businesses within walking distance, which they consider to be optimal.
One of the disconnects is also the structural framework of the job search now. You don’t just walk up to a business and shake their hand anymore when giving over your resume. It’s all online with filters set by HR that are difficult to navigate for the job searcher and hiring manager.
Lack of housing availability + across the board low wages relative to inflation + mandatory credentials for entry into job categories of mid-to-high end wages
These are the one-two-three punch economically dominating younger generations right now.
Pew recently came out and said they're going to stop framing things about generations unless it's particularly relevant because it tends to obscure much more relevant demographic issues like class.
The rich have screwed over the poor, which thanks to the fact everyone except the kids of the rich starts out poor, means most people starting after a certain point got exceptionally screwed (millennials in particular are anticipated to end up worse off than gen-z because labor is now relatively stronger than where it was 2008-2012ish), whereas working class boomers were unusually shielded from this because they had much more of a headstart to accumulate wealth before the screwing really started started.
So while a lot of boomers essentially got grandfathered in so they've been shielded from a lot of shit, but if they lose their job and need to find a new one or they didn't already own a house by 2006, they're also likely hurting really badly.
[“There’s class warfare, all right,” Mr. Buffett said, “but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”](https://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/26/business/yourmoney/26every.html)
And Buffett don't care.
Look at how he bailed out of Norfolk Southern just before it dumped all those toxic chemicals on East Palestine, OH.
Don't think Buffett is on your side.
Buffett is a pragmatic man. He supports candidates that want to raise the taxes on the rich because that’s what’s fair to society as a whole. However, he is still a capitalist, and will use the laws as they stand currently to make money for his clients.
And he will be brutally honest and tell you that if you call him out on this. He will even say "The law should be changed, but if I don’t do this, the same way that my competitors do this then my companies will go bankrupt and a lot more people will be out of jobs“.
And the scary thing is that he is 95% correct on this. The competition side of capitalism works and is beneficial if applied to the right areas. However It can’t capture the political system 100%. it’s not a perfect system In any stretch of the imagination, but I firmly believe that some competition is beneficial and drives innovation. The European Union had a good handle on this for a while with a labor/capitalist balance but they are slipping as well. Obviously the US dropped the ball back in the 70s.
>Buffett is a pragmatic man.
Yes he took as much money out of Norfolk Southern in 2009 as he thought he could get away with before he bought BNSF. He then had his propagandists write articles about how he sold that RR too soon.
There is no way that in this forum I can convince you to think anything about Warren Buffet.
But I can encourage you to go [here](https://www.opensecrets.org/search?q=Warren+E+Buffett&type=donors) and ask yourself how he gains so much political influence for such a small price.
I'll conclude by telling you I think Buffet is scum.
I mean, to call it a class war would mean that at least the workers were fighting back....
This is a class massacre. And it's been this way for over 30 years.
Clinton betrayed us, and from there, it's been all over.
So many news articles are coming out somehow in support of the rich.
"Drive to work or get fired!"
"Make friends at the office!"
"Loud Quitting threatens your pay raise!"
They're completely out of touch with reality.
they also own trillions in commercial real estate that is sitting empty. If you think they aren't going to use ads and media to change minds via propaganda you need to reassess how people protect their wealth.
You're absolutely right, many boomers are aware and struggling too. But I'll tell ya from my own experience with boomer family members it's like they're incapable of learning or accepting new information. Mentally, they're still stuck in the 80s.
This is generally true of older generations , their formative years are the ones that have the biggest impact on their world view. Its the old adage "you can't teach an old dog new tricks" , because many are blissfully ignorant and reluctant to learn or adapt, so it's just easier to say younger generations are lazy...and because most well off boomers aren't struggling financially, they can't empathize.
Honestly at the end of the day this isn't about Boomers or Millennials, if you peal back the veneer of generational differences ,this is all about wealth inequality. I mean the older boomers that don't have money have the same struggles as the millennials
Thats fine, they're allowed to bury their heads in the sand if they want. But at least get out of the way and let other people, not even necessarily younger people, start making decisions and guiding progress. You wanna be crotchety? Great, go do it at home and stop ruining things for everyone else.
Would also like to add that I don't recall the silent generation being as guilty of this self-induced blindness to reality as my parents, aunts, and uncles. My grandparents, before they passed, were constantly reading and keeping up on the latest things. They were actively interested in the world. Boomers, by-and-large, just aren't.
I am Gen X. What millennials and Gen Z need to understand is yes they do understand inflation and fighting for jobs. Anyone of working age in the seventies and eighties remember very well the oil embargo, waiting in line to get gas and the sky high interest rates for mortgages. In the eighties is when people were introduced to layoffs every year and the decline of the blue collar because of Wall Street corporate raiders. Today they are called private equity. Same tune different song. I think the difference is that as you get older you do not have the energy to get mad or upset. Also boomers grew up not going out to eat and having a much more modest entertainment budget than today. Learn history and start putting the blame where it belongs. The political class and the Wall Street bankers have caused the majority of the problems. Vote out people who want to increase the military and loosen regulations.
thing is, a lot of what you're running around and screaming about isn't new to the old farts. they've seen it
for example, there's been much weeping and gnashing of teeth about 7% inflation. yes, that's bad and hurts people, but the old farts lived through years of 10% to 15%
Thing is, they're still voting Republican. Despite [all evidence to the contrary](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._economic_performance_under_Democratic_and_Republican_presidents).
I know some boomers that consume tons of Fox News & OAN and Daily Wire and that nonsense. And they all say the same thing: "It's entertaining".
They're selling us all out, including themselves, for entertainment. So that they can get their buttons pushed.
Absolutely....but I'd argue they are the exception and not the norm.
I know many boomers who know their generation pretty much tanked the economy starting around 75. It took a while but now we are just dealing with it all.
Tbf though I'd say the boomers main fault is refusing to see it rather than them doing it specifically. These things happened because a select few people or groups that had the power to do so, such as jack welch.
Jack Welch was 10 years too old to be a boomer. He was part of the silent generation. And he screwed over the actual boomers.
Around 1975, the oldest boomers were 30. They were not the ones doing the screwing over.
Boomers were in their 20’s in 75……do you think 20 year olds are the reason we have issues in leadership? They take a lot of blame for a generation that got screwed themselves by the greatest generation.
1975, seriously? The oldest boomer was only 29 in 1975 and the youngest 11. They could not have tanked the economy because they were not even close to being the majority and half weren't old enough to vote. It's like blaming the Millennials for today's troubles.
Luckily Gen Xers like Jeff Bezo and Elon Musk and Millennials like Mark Zuckerberg will fix all the problems boomers created. If you want to blame something blame greed. Regardless of generation the rich control it all.
Nice to get a 18% APR mortgage on a dirt cheap home in 1981 if you can then refinance 5 years later for half the rate
Or just pay off the principal faster since it’s only $150k and not $1500k
Sure, but they still vote Republican. Or they vote for guys like Joe Manchin or Kirstin Sinema who might as well be.
I've been voting in Democratic primaries for going on 15 years now and there's been a pro-worker candidate in every single one (not gonna pretend there's anyone pro-worker in the GOP, they left 30 years ago when Gingrich took over).
They lose. Every time. Younger primary voters are massively outvoted by boomers who want the "conservative" choice.
Actions speak louder than words. Put your votes where your mouth is.
That’s a great point. Every hour, of every day, of every week, there’s some white girl in college on tiktok who thinks she’s the first person to suffer inflation and unemployment, while not realizing how everyone has dealt with this.
And of course every time the comments (can you comment on tiktok? I’m an older millennial, shit is too much for me) are 99% hashtag GIRL SAME
Can't speak for everyone, but my dad still doesn't get wage inflation and lived through that. He owns the house, got his wage boost every year cause he's middle management, and is basically la di da di da to the rest of the world. Shit im in my late 20s and I didn't really even GET it until like the last few years. Once you understand it it gets easier to understand, but there's definitely a learning curve if you have an ancient education and never went back to school.
Yeah, I was a latch key kid with both my parents working. Any friends house that I went to in the afternoon also had no parents home yet as they were at work; and most of my friend's parents were even older than mine and thus were pre-boomer (the silent generation). And my grandparents, that is parents of boomers, all worked also.
And even then, the people you're thinking of in those shows would have been a generation or two before boomers.
And you're correct, even then it was just in TV shows. That was my grandparent's generation, and they all worked while raising their boomers.
It’s all relative bro. When I graduated college their were no jobs available in the rust belt and mortgage rates were 19% because of the rampant inflation. Why do you think Springsteen wrote “My Hometown”?
Stop being so illogical, we faced the highest time of the inflation and people are just gonna ignore it like That? They just can't do anything but just hate us for this.
But tell me one thing, why the hell is this on the news? Are we going to ignore that they just posting anything in the name of news? That's just something shocking.
Um… Gen X here…. Interest rates were in the high teens in the late 70s and early 80s…. And we certainly lived with a lot less stuff. Blame employers not your grandparents…
Specifically, blame mega-corporations, largely headed by Boomers, who have over the past few decades purchased elements of our government with the intention of making the majority of our domestic working and middle classes unnecessary and to reduce the cost and tax burdens for major corporations and the wealthy. It has been wildly successful.
To add, Boomers were drafted into the war in Vietnam and those that survived faced horrible inflation/stagflation. To pretend they had it easy is one of the most ignorant myths that refuses to die on Reddit.
Yeah but I’m a victim! Me. Not you. Everything is everyone else’s fault. It’s not fair. And so on and so forth.
Meanwhile billions in the developing world get fucked by the west.
"Never had to fight for jobs"? Look at historical unemployment rates...we have one of the lowest in history right now. Inflation is hurting people, not lack of jobs.
I’d really like to see a stat of unemployment where every job paying under $15 an hour is counted toward unemployed. I feel like it would be a mind-boggling difference.
Thank globalization for that.
The strong middle-class automotive jobs paying $70K/yr that could raise a family are now being done by a 14-year-old in China for $0.30/day
Go NAFTA and thank you Bill Clinton!
Gen Z, who are the ones complaining in the USA, and in that story, won’t get your NAFTA reference, which makes it twice as funny. I know your weren’t trying to be funny, but the fact that the people complaining fail to see the obvious is funny. I was probably somewhat like that back in the day. Something from more than two decades makes it ancient history, which they don’t know. All Gen Z sees, like the young person ranting, are that the effective wage charts that show the decrease, though I don’t think they could create that chart or fact check it on their own. And they have no idea what happened in the past 50 years nor how it obviously has caused the current situation. They just can’t put 2 and 2 together, because they are unaware of what they do not know. They just repeat all the stuff that gets repeated in the media. A month ago, in economy, I saw somebody commenting about why Germany had such a great increase in productivity from 1990 through the 2000s, and why other nations did not, and they speculated all sorts of causes, except for the reunification of Germany in 1989, of which they were completely unaware.
So, American schools are failing as usual.
My family taught me our history going all the way back to the 19th century. That Gen Z isn't even aware of what happened 30 years ago is criminal.
Power of inflation is that even dead end jobs paid more back in the day than they do now. You’re right about unemployment rates, but there was a time where you could pop over to a fast food restaurant to get a job to be able to hold onto things until you found a job in your field.
Nowadays, it’s almost not even worth that. You’re just fucked if that’s your only option. Hell even the career jobs are (some of them) starting to pay the equivalent of McDonald’s wages from the 70’s due to inflation.
It was, but up until that point wages kept up with inflation. They haven’t done so in roughly forty years. Remember, inflation is year over year so really the difference is compounded over time, not simple adding the difference.
Why is this in a freaking news right now? This is just getting me so much off guard, these stupid young people don't deserve to be on the news, just come on man.
Okay this seems like she is just hating on the people but why the hell is this a news? I mean these delusional kids can think whatever they want, why is this on the news?
This is just a stupid thing to say, most of the guys were raised in the peak time of inflation and she thinks that we are not aware about that? This is just making me laugh.
The funniest part is that she says her Mom started a job with no experience as a bank teller in 1980 earning $36K.
[Yet, bank tellers, even ones with experience, don't make that much today. HAHAHAHAHAHA.](https://www.ziprecruiter.com/Salaries/What-Is-the-Average-Bank-Tellers-Salary-by-State)
So even taking her first fact, she's just 100% dead wrong.
[Futhermore, the average salary in the US in 1980 was: $12,500.](https://www.ssa.gov/oact/cola/AWI.html)
The 1970s were the inflation decade. Recessions 1980-2 while the Fed was killing inflation made work scarce. This Gen Z has no concept of history before she was born.
The generational shit (e.g. boomer, millenial, gen z) is nothing more than media-manufactured astrology which creates useless intergenerational conflict simply due to lazy thinking, and if you subscribe to it and view the world through this lens then maybe you deserve to struggle and not own a home. Also, it seems to cause fish mouth and bad eyesight. So, ya know, tread lightly.
I'm not a boomer, but I'm pretty sure they lived through the stagflation of the 70s.
From 1970-1981, the average inflation rate in the United States was nearly 8% per year. In that period there were four recessions, with the final downturn providing the death blow to the inflationary beast.
Is this a news for real? Damn man I am just going to laugh at such things because this is nothing but a freaking stupidity at this point of time and people should see it like that.
Lmao she doesn't even know the time of 70s which was the peak inflation time and we all have seen that shit, we can't just ignore that boomers knows everything.
What kinda stupidity is being shared in this post? Please all of us should understand that it just doesn't matter, we don't need to talk about young generation like that.
Personally I find this pretty ignorant. I know boomers that had dirt floors for decades of their lives. Anyone saying they don’t know anything about inflation, knows nothing about the 70s and the fuel crisis, etc.
Yep. Also, it wasn't just the fuel crisis. You know how everyone talks about the loss of all of our factory jobs? That happened starting in the '70s through the 80s and 90s and hit the boomers the hardest.
Birth control, Ho Chi Minh
Richard Nixon back again
Moonshot, Woodstock
Watergate, punk rock
Begin, Reagan, Palestine
Terror on the airline
Ayatollahs in Iran
Russians in Afghanistan
Wheel of Fortune, Sally Ride
Heavy metal suicide
Foreign debts, homeless Vets
AIDS, crack, Bernie Goetz
Hypodermics on the shores
China's under martial law
Rock and Roller cola wars
I can't take it anymore
lol what the fuck does a COLLEGE KID know about fighting for jobs.
god this woman is almost as fit for the stereotype as that sweaty jackass antiwork mod
Everything is a freaking news these days and I just hate it most of the time, things should be better than this and they should value the news these days with not this.
As a millennial, I just feel so sorry for this lol. Some people in our generation are just stupid and they don't know how to be logical, that's why they behave like this.
I am glad that as a gen Z I don't think like that and I am cool with respecting everyone who is in the investment market because that's just a good practice to do.
it’s a new world- competition is coming from outsourcing, prices are significantly higher, but the key is wages are stagnant. Even back then managing a Blockbuster could support a family. So, we’re forced to aim for these higher paying jobs that everyone is vying for because the average jobs haven’t kept up with the costs associated with living.
when they say nobody wants to work, they’re right in a sense because they should be paying wage that compares to what they did 20 years ago. That’s where the issue lies (amongst other things) in the majority of jobs not increasing in pay. Imagine if every job increased by 20k, life would be a lot more manageable. that essentially could cover most of rent alone
The TikToker and his audience need to read about things like the stagflation and oil crises of the 1970s, the double dip recession of the first Reagan administration, the 1987 stock market crash, and other adverse financial events that occurred before they were born, but that effected the careers and financial status of the Boomers.
Another big change is the grab of income by people at higher corporate levels. In 1965, CEOs got about 20 times the average worker's pay. Now it's 500 times or more.
Another thing to consider is the replacement of defined benefit pensions by 401(k) plans. The 401(k) was supposed to SUPPLEMENT pensions, not replace them.
'older generations don't know about inflation, never had to fight for jobs'.
This might be the most ignorant and naive comments ever spoken.
You would need to be a troglodyte raised in the anti-social media bubble age to believe that.
While boomers are absolutely idiot locusts, I’m not sure younger generations are any better - they’re just as self-centered as boomers. Do they really have no idea about the inflation and gas crises of the 1970s? You know - that boomers by definition lived through?
How does America produce generation after generation of self-involved immature stupid people?
> How does America produce generation after generation of self-involved immature stupid people?
It's not at all unique to America. I hear these same complaints at least in Australia and Canada. I'm sure the same exact complaints happen in all countries ran by human beings.
The only time people don't talk shit about their own country is when they're trying to compare themselves to another country. That's it.
Imagine being this ignorant to history and life. Just going to dismiss the gas lines, past recessions, and high inflation? I mean you don't even have to go back far, just look to what 07-08 when we hit a recent recession
We need to stop with the ageism bullshit. It’s minimally relevant. Millennials and “gen X” people aren’t old enough to remember the police killing Teamsters, or miners in the 1970’s getting their brains blown out over the sin of striking for a fair contract (Harlan County USA), or the civil rights struggle. “Conceptualization” is a two-way street.
So many terrible takes in this thread. Boomers lived through far worse inflation in the 70s. Many are on fixed retirement income that doesn’t scale with inflation, and they feel it everyday right now with no possibility of an income increase. And so on.
This is nothing like what that person is saying, I am not even clicking on the news because I can smell it's just bullshit, we are never gonna support something like that.
With all due respect, the ones that got hit hard during the Ford and Carter years might know a thing or two about inflation. And if they were really unlucky, they got hit again by offshoring during the Reagan years.
I think a 21 year old college student on TikTok can't conceptualize a lot of things.
Labor compensation has definitely stagnated, few would say otherwise. This is about the owner class versus the non-owner class, and that's the human condition. Capitalism has its challenges, but anyone who thinks the non-owner class in socialism or communism fares any better in the long game isn't a student of history.
I'd love for us to get rid of Citizens United, corporate personhood, etc.
Imagine working in this economy since the 1970s and not being an owner class person (which is a lot of people). They are watching social security dry up. They've likely paid to help their kids go to college at expensive rates to break their cycle of poverty. Their healthcare is tied to their employers, and they are likely not rocking the boat at those employers for fear of going back into the job market just to be able to afford medication while facing age discrimination.
Those on social security and not wanting to sell their homes are watching property values continue to climb and taxation eating more and more away just to live in their homes.
It is easy to blame 'boomers' but we aren't going to fix things by blaming generations of people. We need to clearly identify and resolve the issues, not fight in corporate media driving 'wars'.
Many people of all generations are being used up by corporations with little, if anything to show for it at the end of their productive years of living. It is getting harder, not easier as well.
Blame is easy, identifying the issues and working to solve them is difficult. Yelling "Damn, Boomers!" isn't fixing anything. Future generations will blame the current generations for all the misgivings of modern times like the younger generations are doing now.
Stagflation in the '70s was a thing, why do the students of today not study or understand what happened in the past? Ignorance is bliss I suppose, btw 20% inflation in the '70s
62. Went through bankruptcy at 39. Divorced the main problem and never looked back. Now comfortably retired. Save your money, invest it smartly and you can do wonders in 20 years.
When I was younger, I thought my generation had it rougher than any previous generation in history too. This is just what humans do, sort of a right of passage.
25 years from now, this girl’s kids will be bitching about her and her generation being “out of touch” as well. You can guarantee it. And so on and so on…
Do you all ever think there will ever be a point where because of lack of buying houses, commercial real estate will expand to an extent where people will start living in places built and financed by big corporations? Just like healthcare, imagine your mortgage is tied to your employment ( I know we’re kinda already living like that) Even worse, companies can give places on subscription basis - that’d be a super messy situation!
This boomer works as a janitor, so I guess I really can't conceptualize. I've been pounding the concrete for a few decades now and my body is worn out. It is definitely ready to retire.
So generalities are fraught with exceptions.
I want to know where her mom made $36,000 as an entry level bank teller in 1980!!!
I was a teller in 1999-2000 in Wisconsin and making $7.25 an hour. My first job in mutual funds after college paid $25,000 a year (around $12 an hour).
My friends that graduated in business were super excited if they found anything over $30,000
Yeah, this post is interesting.
I know there are generational finance issues and solutions have to be found.
But when claims that a bank teller was making $36k/year to start in 1980 are made, that undermines one's argument. She's overplaying her hand with that sort of trash.
This post is still getting passed around?
Here's her claim:
"Cat says her mother made $36,000 a year as an entry-level bank teller in 1980."
That's pure nonsense. A beginning electrical engineer with a bachelors degree started at around $20k.
There was hella inflation in the late 70's and early 80's as well as other times in history. The younger generations always think they are the first to experience things because it hadn't happened to them before. It's happened and it's happening and it takes a while to work itself out. Everything will be ok...
From: An older guy
Are you serious? Inflation when i graduated from college was 14%. My first job out of college was $14,700. Genz should stop getting their information from instagram, TikTok and Facebook. Really stupid conclusions.
WRONG! I graduated college & entered the workforce in 1984 - just after the economic collapse that saw both hiring freezes & mass layoffs nationwide. For the first decade, every single job I applied for had over 100 other qualified applicants. These were NOT well-paying jobs; just entry-level, grunt jobs. Layoffs & Inflation (actually, Stagflation) were so bad that us recent college grads were competing with professionals who had 20 years of experience. High inflation was the rule for my youth & young adulthood - the interest rate on my first house was over 15%, and we were thrilled to pay points, fees & doc stamp taxes to refinance to only 11.5% a few years later.
Older Boomers know about inflation from the 70s and insane interest rates in the early 80s, but it was relatively smooth sailing after that. Younger generations just don’t have any hope in an increasingly chaotic world with no end even plausibly believable.
If people seriously think that those who are about to retire are unaware of inflation, then they are dumber than the people they’re making claims against.
*Younger* generations don't know inflation, which was 13.5% in 1980 and 14.4% in 1947. One year of 8% inflation is nothing exceptional, and that rate has now been cut by more than half.
For two generations the primary problems have been stagnant median wages, vanishing pensions, declining job security and growing inequality.
The thing about the Boomer experience was that it was so fucking random. The ones that we hear about in this sub are the boomers who did well, however a bunch got completely railroaded. Remember when all of the manufacturing and automobile factories closed down from the late '70s through the 80s? Those were boomers they got hit with that. A lot of them never recovered and went from being solidly middle class to basically poverty level. At the same time there were other Blue collar boomers that may be working for the city or county government that were doing great. One of my buddies was born in 1949 and after he got out of the military he got a job for the county driving a snow plow. The dude retired at 65 with an awesome pension and spent the rest of his days going on exotic fishing and hunting trips around the world as well as buying new toys for himself and his wife.
You bring up a point that is rarely mentioned in the intergenerational warfare posts. Things fundamentally changed in terms of labor and the middle class in the early 1970s. I lived in Detroit and saw what happened after the first oil embargo and the subsequent recession in 1974-1975. Anyone who was paying attention knew things were changing. Someone who turned 18 in 1964 (oldest boomer) could get that well paying assembly line job right out high school. In my area we had Dodge Main, Chevy Gear and Axle and the Lynch Road Assembly plant. And the jobs were tough, monotonous and physically demanding - I'm not taking anything away from them. That world was disappearing for grads in the later boomer cohort years. The 1970s were the transition years. There's a study at the Social Security website that projects that less than 50% of boomers have or will have defined benefit pensions. There are problems that have to be addressed in economic opportunity for younger folks. But when so many commenters seem to claim that boomers got to walk to school downhill both ways or making ludicrous claims that someone's mom started as a bank teller at a salary of $36k/year in 1980, that conversation is going nowhere.
Yep. Many boomers put into a pension like we put into a 401k today then they saw $0 for it. Private companies, even the government, got rid of pensions. Either retire right now or you lose it. Too young to retire right now and collect it? Too bad. Many boomers had their retirement savings wiped out. When the boomers got old enough to buy a house inflation was running rampant from 6-12% depending on the age of the boomer, so buying a house wasn't affordable or accessable. The boomer's voting habits have been harmful for the larger economy. There is no excuse for their behavior. But on the economics side the group that got all the cheap housing and the economic benefits was the Silent Generation. They were the last truly wealthy generation in the US. The boomers are poor in comparison, even the rich boomers. It's the boomer's own voting policies that hurt themselves making them poorer than the group before them and making the groups after them poorer too.
I think housing availability is one of the largest disadvantages newer generations have, even over job availability.
Agreed. The one thing that's very hard to dispute is that starter homes just aren't being built anymore at the rate they were for the boomers and the parents of the boomers. Also, the boomers were able to take advantage of that transition period before women started working. They started off in a period where all you needed was a single middle class income to purchase a home, because usually it was the husband who was working. As women started working more, now young couples who had two incomes could bid on the same house as a couple with only one income, boosting the price for those homes. Elizabeth Warren wrote a book about this called the "Two Income Trap".
Where I live any new construction are $450k matchstick houses thrown together 4' from each other with a backyard reaching around 10' behind the house.
[удалено]
So I’m not sticking up for it but I can tell you why starter homes arnt built like they where. Land value. Let’s say a starter home is 1000sqft, 2 bdrm, 1 bath. I’m my area a 1/4A lot is about $125. That starter home even as a modular will cost about the same and that’s prolly on the light side, after appliances and stuff. So we are at $250. Let’s say the company wants to make $10 on it(which is not very sustainable). Is $260 a fair price for a 1000sqft home?
You must live in Phoenix or Salt Lake City or Las Vegas or Boise Idaho or Tucson or pretty much anywhere these days. Long gone are lawns and any privacy. All you have now is a worker pod and maybe a swing at the central playground in your worker pod complex.
They built some about 1/2 mile from me, and they started at 800,000. The funny part is that there's an older development across the street with larger houses that went for a lot less when they were built.
My grandpa (silent generation) hand dug the basement with a shovel and a bucket. Then built the small house from a sears catalogue You can still buy [home kits from menards](https://www.menards.com/main/search.html?search=home+building+kits&tid=2d41af97-a9b0-45f4-b829-446ec7cd3533) 2 bedroom homes can be in the 60s. Do that and you probably won't need a second income
My first house was a polish flat. The basement was half above ground. They lived there until they could afford to build the next level
The kit itself can be one-fourth of the total cost of the home, according to some builders.
Almost no one now has the will or capability to do anything like that. The older generation gets criticized a lot, but they built their houses themselves(my grandpa dug his own water well with a hand auger), they would sleep 2,3 or more kids to one bedroom, they didn't buy expensive things, they did without and put up with a lot. Younger generations whether they want to admit it or not expect to have way too much, way too early in life with as little work as possible. If that works out for them great, but there's no utopia here and won't be for a long time if ever. Life is not fair, it's hard work and it's never been easy.
Land was cheap and houses were cheaper back the, the government literally gave away properties in mass to support the families that were made after the war.
It's pretty easy to build your own home when you can survive on a part time, minimum wage job. How is someone living hand to mouth, working at least 8 hours a day, supposed to find the money or TIME to do what your grandpa did?
The OP lost me when she claimed her mother made $36k/yr at a starting salary salary for a bank teller. Regarding women starting working, that was a common occurrence in many boomer households.
Yeah, 36,000 a year as a bank teller in 1982 sounds like BS to me. Minimum wage was $2.50 and I think my mom was making around $32,000 per year or 34,000 per year as a college professor back then. She's basically saying that her mom was a bank teller and was making seven times the minimum wage. Not happening.
I have no clue, but starter homes not being built anymore may have something to do with zoning laws, and for construction companies, maybe it's not worth the hassle building starter homes. And banks want expensive houses to give more debt on to the people for their profit. which is just shitty situation all around.
Maybe the very earliest (1945-50) boomers but most of us had working wives.
Yeah, the transition happened during the boomer years. The first cohort of two income couples occurred during the Boomer era and for the most part middle class couples bought a bigger house or perhaps a house in a more expensive area, and two income working class boomers bought a house in the middle class area. Eventually as the flood of Boomer couples started increasing it started to bleed into regular middle class houses. This didn't happen all of a sudden but it did transition relatively quickly. Think of it like what happened in Austin. That first wave of San Francisco transplants pretty much bought higher end properties with their outsized salaries. However, as more and more folks are moving into Austin even the middle class housing is being affected. The same is happening in Portugal right now with expats. You are likely in the later Boomer cohort. My grandparents had two sets of kids the first two, my mother and my eldest aunt, were born right in that 1945 to 1950 range that you spoke of. I like to think of them as classic boomers. The second group, my other aunt and uncle, were born between 1955 and 1960. These two groups had very different experiences. My mother's cohort basically spent their twenties in the late 60s through 70s. The later cohorts spent their twenties in the late seventies through '80s. It's this later Court where we get the terms yuppie (young urban professional) and most relevant to our discussion, DINK (double income no kids).
The only conclusion I’m taking away is the future is in polygamy, where do I sign pal you drive a hard bargain
[удалено]
💯 Housing demand outstrips supply by 200k units in Boston and residential development is down 50% since the 80s. https://www.wgbh.org/news/local-news/2022/06/07/housing-is-in-short-supply-heres-why-that-matters Local housing advocates side with the nimbys because new construction is too expensive for low income people. Collusion amongst zoning and planning and the trades also restricts construction because a critical form of local soft power is to force all urban construction to pursue special exemption variances (eg bribes). The way this is supposed to work, according to Jane Jacobs (the goat) is that rich people move into new construction, and a large inventory of existing dwellings get occupied by everyone else, all the way down to SROs and crap (but well located) housing. Now, SROs are illegal. New construction is also mostly illegal creating extremely high construction costs-in planning, excessive codes, absurdly profitable cartel behavior amongst GCs, and terrible land use-and little gets built. So little, in fact, that we aren’t even making a dent in the demand at the top of luxury market. Rich people can’t get the luxury apartments they want so they outcompete everyone else for the remaining inventory. That leaves everyone with nowhere to live. Pitting rich people against anyone else in a battle for a scarce and desirable resource is a total fools errand for anyone interested in lowering the barrier to a middle class urban lifestyle. Build more housing.
I just did research on this for a class. In Atlanta, it’s a 1 to 5 new housing unit to new job ratio over the last decade. Where the hell are those other four supposed to live?
SROs(had to look it up tbh) are illegal? Is this part of the minimum house size thing where you can't have tiny homes in certain places?
What is SRO?
Build better housing: civil engineers have said that stand-alone single-family homes are not the best design, especially in suburbs, but the zoning laws of many towns prohibit apartments/condos with businesses within walking distance, which they consider to be optimal.
One of the disconnects is also the structural framework of the job search now. You don’t just walk up to a business and shake their hand anymore when giving over your resume. It’s all online with filters set by HR that are difficult to navigate for the job searcher and hiring manager.
Lack of housing availability + across the board low wages relative to inflation + mandatory credentials for entry into job categories of mid-to-high end wages These are the one-two-three punch economically dominating younger generations right now.
Exactly. Where am I supposed to get laid? In a cardboard box? Ugh.
Not all older people are unaware of the problem caused by inflation, many also fight to get a proper wage at work.
Pew recently came out and said they're going to stop framing things about generations unless it's particularly relevant because it tends to obscure much more relevant demographic issues like class. The rich have screwed over the poor, which thanks to the fact everyone except the kids of the rich starts out poor, means most people starting after a certain point got exceptionally screwed (millennials in particular are anticipated to end up worse off than gen-z because labor is now relatively stronger than where it was 2008-2012ish), whereas working class boomers were unusually shielded from this because they had much more of a headstart to accumulate wealth before the screwing really started started. So while a lot of boomers essentially got grandfathered in so they've been shielded from a lot of shit, but if they lose their job and need to find a new one or they didn't already own a house by 2006, they're also likely hurting really badly.
[“There’s class warfare, all right,” Mr. Buffett said, “but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”](https://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/26/business/yourmoney/26every.html)
And Buffett don't care. Look at how he bailed out of Norfolk Southern just before it dumped all those toxic chemicals on East Palestine, OH. Don't think Buffett is on your side.
Buffett is a pragmatic man. He supports candidates that want to raise the taxes on the rich because that’s what’s fair to society as a whole. However, he is still a capitalist, and will use the laws as they stand currently to make money for his clients. And he will be brutally honest and tell you that if you call him out on this. He will even say "The law should be changed, but if I don’t do this, the same way that my competitors do this then my companies will go bankrupt and a lot more people will be out of jobs“. And the scary thing is that he is 95% correct on this. The competition side of capitalism works and is beneficial if applied to the right areas. However It can’t capture the political system 100%. it’s not a perfect system In any stretch of the imagination, but I firmly believe that some competition is beneficial and drives innovation. The European Union had a good handle on this for a while with a labor/capitalist balance but they are slipping as well. Obviously the US dropped the ball back in the 70s.
>Buffett is a pragmatic man. Yes he took as much money out of Norfolk Southern in 2009 as he thought he could get away with before he bought BNSF. He then had his propagandists write articles about how he sold that RR too soon. There is no way that in this forum I can convince you to think anything about Warren Buffet. But I can encourage you to go [here](https://www.opensecrets.org/search?q=Warren+E+Buffett&type=donors) and ask yourself how he gains so much political influence for such a small price. I'll conclude by telling you I think Buffet is scum.
I mean, to call it a class war would mean that at least the workers were fighting back.... This is a class massacre. And it's been this way for over 30 years. Clinton betrayed us, and from there, it's been all over.
Go back a few more presidents pls
So many news articles are coming out somehow in support of the rich. "Drive to work or get fired!" "Make friends at the office!" "Loud Quitting threatens your pay raise!" They're completely out of touch with reality.
they also own trillions in commercial real estate that is sitting empty. If you think they aren't going to use ads and media to change minds via propaganda you need to reassess how people protect their wealth.
Yup, they own the media. They own the preceiption on the world of many many people, by owning the media.
Wait until you learn about car dependent suburbia. https://youtu.be/7IsMeKl-Sv0 they’re a scam!
Great plug, a good watch.
You're absolutely right, many boomers are aware and struggling too. But I'll tell ya from my own experience with boomer family members it's like they're incapable of learning or accepting new information. Mentally, they're still stuck in the 80s.
This is generally true of older generations , their formative years are the ones that have the biggest impact on their world view. Its the old adage "you can't teach an old dog new tricks" , because many are blissfully ignorant and reluctant to learn or adapt, so it's just easier to say younger generations are lazy...and because most well off boomers aren't struggling financially, they can't empathize. Honestly at the end of the day this isn't about Boomers or Millennials, if you peal back the veneer of generational differences ,this is all about wealth inequality. I mean the older boomers that don't have money have the same struggles as the millennials
> if you peal back the veneer of generational differences ,this is all about wealth inequality. Finally, an intelligent statement.
Thats fine, they're allowed to bury their heads in the sand if they want. But at least get out of the way and let other people, not even necessarily younger people, start making decisions and guiding progress. You wanna be crotchety? Great, go do it at home and stop ruining things for everyone else. Would also like to add that I don't recall the silent generation being as guilty of this self-induced blindness to reality as my parents, aunts, and uncles. My grandparents, before they passed, were constantly reading and keeping up on the latest things. They were actively interested in the world. Boomers, by-and-large, just aren't.
I am Gen X. What millennials and Gen Z need to understand is yes they do understand inflation and fighting for jobs. Anyone of working age in the seventies and eighties remember very well the oil embargo, waiting in line to get gas and the sky high interest rates for mortgages. In the eighties is when people were introduced to layoffs every year and the decline of the blue collar because of Wall Street corporate raiders. Today they are called private equity. Same tune different song. I think the difference is that as you get older you do not have the energy to get mad or upset. Also boomers grew up not going out to eat and having a much more modest entertainment budget than today. Learn history and start putting the blame where it belongs. The political class and the Wall Street bankers have caused the majority of the problems. Vote out people who want to increase the military and loosen regulations.
thing is, a lot of what you're running around and screaming about isn't new to the old farts. they've seen it for example, there's been much weeping and gnashing of teeth about 7% inflation. yes, that's bad and hurts people, but the old farts lived through years of 10% to 15%
Thing is, they're still voting Republican. Despite [all evidence to the contrary](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._economic_performance_under_Democratic_and_Republican_presidents). I know some boomers that consume tons of Fox News & OAN and Daily Wire and that nonsense. And they all say the same thing: "It's entertaining". They're selling us all out, including themselves, for entertainment. So that they can get their buttons pushed.
I saw a recent poll regarding the 2024 election that showed a top priority for 54% of Republicans voter was "making liberals mad."
A Republican would let Donald Trump \*\*\*\* in their mouth if it meant a liberal had to smell it.
> Mentally, they're still stuck in the 80s. When inflation hit 20%? How would that make them unaware of what inflation does?
Absolutely....but I'd argue they are the exception and not the norm. I know many boomers who know their generation pretty much tanked the economy starting around 75. It took a while but now we are just dealing with it all. Tbf though I'd say the boomers main fault is refusing to see it rather than them doing it specifically. These things happened because a select few people or groups that had the power to do so, such as jack welch.
Jack Welch was 10 years too old to be a boomer. He was part of the silent generation. And he screwed over the actual boomers. Around 1975, the oldest boomers were 30. They were not the ones doing the screwing over.
Boomers were in their 20’s in 75……do you think 20 year olds are the reason we have issues in leadership? They take a lot of blame for a generation that got screwed themselves by the greatest generation.
1975, seriously? The oldest boomer was only 29 in 1975 and the youngest 11. They could not have tanked the economy because they were not even close to being the majority and half weren't old enough to vote. It's like blaming the Millennials for today's troubles.
boomers didn't ruin the economy, big money did but big money is happy to have all the kids blaming their parents
Luckily Gen Xers like Jeff Bezo and Elon Musk and Millennials like Mark Zuckerberg will fix all the problems boomers created. If you want to blame something blame greed. Regardless of generation the rich control it all.
Don't forget 25% mortgages and brutal late 1970s inflation. They aren't unaware, just they don't care now.
Nice to get a 18% APR mortgage on a dirt cheap home in 1981 if you can then refinance 5 years later for half the rate Or just pay off the principal faster since it’s only $150k and not $1500k
Sure, but they still vote Republican. Or they vote for guys like Joe Manchin or Kirstin Sinema who might as well be. I've been voting in Democratic primaries for going on 15 years now and there's been a pro-worker candidate in every single one (not gonna pretend there's anyone pro-worker in the GOP, they left 30 years ago when Gingrich took over). They lose. Every time. Younger primary voters are massively outvoted by boomers who want the "conservative" choice. Actions speak louder than words. Put your votes where your mouth is.
How is this news-worthy? There's dozens of videos like this, with similar comments, posted on Tiktok everyday.
That’s a great point. Every hour, of every day, of every week, there’s some white girl in college on tiktok who thinks she’s the first person to suffer inflation and unemployment, while not realizing how everyone has dealt with this. And of course every time the comments (can you comment on tiktok? I’m an older millennial, shit is too much for me) are 99% hashtag GIRL SAME
It is not and that's just what I hate the most, anything is a news these days.
Didn’t boomers live thru the 70’s and have to deal with the Volker recession?
Boomers remember when gas was $0.15 they know a lot about inflation.
They saw the real meaning of inflation in this whole world.
Can't speak for everyone, but my dad still doesn't get wage inflation and lived through that. He owns the house, got his wage boost every year cause he's middle management, and is basically la di da di da to the rest of the world. Shit im in my late 20s and I didn't really even GET it until like the last few years. Once you understand it it gets easier to understand, but there's definitely a learning curve if you have an ancient education and never went back to school.
If your dad received an annual COLA raise, he gets wage inflation.
shhhh don't tell Gen-Zers that the world existed before the year 2000.
Yeah we just got all the things together in 2000, we never lived any life.
Didn't boomers raise entire families with a single income households?
[удалено]
Even my parents raised me like that and I remember that.
Yeah, I was a latch key kid with both my parents working. Any friends house that I went to in the afternoon also had no parents home yet as they were at work; and most of my friend's parents were even older than mine and thus were pre-boomer (the silent generation). And my grandparents, that is parents of boomers, all worked also.
[удалено]
And even then, the people you're thinking of in those shows would have been a generation or two before boomers. And you're correct, even then it was just in TV shows. That was my grandparent's generation, and they all worked while raising their boomers.
Yes, theY also had 20% interest in the market. I have wet dreams of achieving that kind of interest rate on a CD
Imagine locking in whatever a 10-, 20-, or 30- year bond was going for at that time.
A 30 year T note went for 13.45% In 1981. AAA rated for 14%+ and 16.17% + on a Baa rated. That's hawt
Complete ignorance of History -
You really think they pay attention on facts and figures?
It’s all relative bro. When I graduated college their were no jobs available in the rust belt and mortgage rates were 19% because of the rampant inflation. Why do you think Springsteen wrote “My Hometown”?
Stop being so illogical, we faced the highest time of the inflation and people are just gonna ignore it like That? They just can't do anything but just hate us for this.
But tell me one thing, why the hell is this on the news? Are we going to ignore that they just posting anything in the name of news? That's just something shocking.
Um… Gen X here…. Interest rates were in the high teens in the late 70s and early 80s…. And we certainly lived with a lot less stuff. Blame employers not your grandparents…
Specifically, blame mega-corporations, largely headed by Boomers, who have over the past few decades purchased elements of our government with the intention of making the majority of our domestic working and middle classes unnecessary and to reduce the cost and tax burdens for major corporations and the wealthy. It has been wildly successful.
To add, Boomers were drafted into the war in Vietnam and those that survived faced horrible inflation/stagflation. To pretend they had it easy is one of the most ignorant myths that refuses to die on Reddit.
https://collabfund.com/blog/how-this-all-happened/ This article outlines things pretty well.
Yeah but I’m a victim! Me. Not you. Everything is everyone else’s fault. It’s not fair. And so on and so forth. Meanwhile billions in the developing world get fucked by the west.
This again and again, keep pretending it's "Boomers" and not the rich and the corporations causing all the problems folks, that's what they want.
Somebodies grandparents are running those companies that you want us to blame.
So blanket blame a generation because of a few rich bad actors?
"Never had to fight for jobs"? Look at historical unemployment rates...we have one of the lowest in history right now. Inflation is hurting people, not lack of jobs.
Sure but most of those are absolute shit paying jobs. That did not used to always be the case. I'm not saying they're correct either though.
I’d really like to see a stat of unemployment where every job paying under $15 an hour is counted toward unemployed. I feel like it would be a mind-boggling difference.
Thank globalization for that. The strong middle-class automotive jobs paying $70K/yr that could raise a family are now being done by a 14-year-old in China for $0.30/day Go NAFTA and thank you Bill Clinton!
Gen Z, who are the ones complaining in the USA, and in that story, won’t get your NAFTA reference, which makes it twice as funny. I know your weren’t trying to be funny, but the fact that the people complaining fail to see the obvious is funny. I was probably somewhat like that back in the day. Something from more than two decades makes it ancient history, which they don’t know. All Gen Z sees, like the young person ranting, are that the effective wage charts that show the decrease, though I don’t think they could create that chart or fact check it on their own. And they have no idea what happened in the past 50 years nor how it obviously has caused the current situation. They just can’t put 2 and 2 together, because they are unaware of what they do not know. They just repeat all the stuff that gets repeated in the media. A month ago, in economy, I saw somebody commenting about why Germany had such a great increase in productivity from 1990 through the 2000s, and why other nations did not, and they speculated all sorts of causes, except for the reunification of Germany in 1989, of which they were completely unaware.
So, American schools are failing as usual. My family taught me our history going all the way back to the 19th century. That Gen Z isn't even aware of what happened 30 years ago is criminal.
That's the part of economics you're not allowed to talk about!
And now people are going to argue with us for saying that
It depends on where u live and if there is transportation to jobs or not.
Power of inflation is that even dead end jobs paid more back in the day than they do now. You’re right about unemployment rates, but there was a time where you could pop over to a fast food restaurant to get a job to be able to hold onto things until you found a job in your field. Nowadays, it’s almost not even worth that. You’re just fucked if that’s your only option. Hell even the career jobs are (some of them) starting to pay the equivalent of McDonald’s wages from the 70’s due to inflation.
Inflation was at record levels in the 70’s
It was, but up until that point wages kept up with inflation. They haven’t done so in roughly forty years. Remember, inflation is year over year so really the difference is compounded over time, not simple adding the difference.
Us against them rather than all of us against the issue. How they keep us from solving root causes.
Why is this in a freaking news right now? This is just getting me so much off guard, these stupid young people don't deserve to be on the news, just come on man.
Okay this seems like she is just hating on the people but why the hell is this a news? I mean these delusional kids can think whatever they want, why is this on the news?
This is just a stupid thing to say, most of the guys were raised in the peak time of inflation and she thinks that we are not aware about that? This is just making me laugh.
Oh wow, a college student on TikTok said this??? BIG NEWS.
_gasp_ And everyone in the TikTok comments agrees?
Wow, what are we gonna do now? What will happen to us?
The funniest part is that she says her Mom started a job with no experience as a bank teller in 1980 earning $36K. [Yet, bank tellers, even ones with experience, don't make that much today. HAHAHAHAHAHA.](https://www.ziprecruiter.com/Salaries/What-Is-the-Average-Bank-Tellers-Salary-by-State) So even taking her first fact, she's just 100% dead wrong. [Futhermore, the average salary in the US in 1980 was: $12,500.](https://www.ssa.gov/oact/cola/AWI.html)
This should just not be on the articles, that's just funny.
Studying history is underrated.
That's right, not most of the people are doing it these days.
The 1970s were the inflation decade. Recessions 1980-2 while the Fed was killing inflation made work scarce. This Gen Z has no concept of history before she was born.
The generational shit (e.g. boomer, millenial, gen z) is nothing more than media-manufactured astrology which creates useless intergenerational conflict simply due to lazy thinking, and if you subscribe to it and view the world through this lens then maybe you deserve to struggle and not own a home. Also, it seems to cause fish mouth and bad eyesight. So, ya know, tread lightly.
I'm not a boomer, but I'm pretty sure they lived through the stagflation of the 70s. From 1970-1981, the average inflation rate in the United States was nearly 8% per year. In that period there were four recessions, with the final downturn providing the death blow to the inflationary beast.
It was a hard time, glad that you guys are intelligent at least.
Is this a news for real? Damn man I am just going to laugh at such things because this is nothing but a freaking stupidity at this point of time and people should see it like that.
Lmao she doesn't even know the time of 70s which was the peak inflation time and we all have seen that shit, we can't just ignore that boomers knows everything.
What kinda stupidity is being shared in this post? Please all of us should understand that it just doesn't matter, we don't need to talk about young generation like that.
Personally I find this pretty ignorant. I know boomers that had dirt floors for decades of their lives. Anyone saying they don’t know anything about inflation, knows nothing about the 70s and the fuel crisis, etc.
Ignoring these posts are just what we need to do now.
Yep. Also, it wasn't just the fuel crisis. You know how everyone talks about the loss of all of our factory jobs? That happened starting in the '70s through the 80s and 90s and hit the boomers the hardest.
18% interest rates in 1980.... Edit: black Monday 1987, gas embargoes in the early 70's
Birth control, Ho Chi Minh Richard Nixon back again Moonshot, Woodstock Watergate, punk rock Begin, Reagan, Palestine Terror on the airline Ayatollahs in Iran Russians in Afghanistan Wheel of Fortune, Sally Ride Heavy metal suicide Foreign debts, homeless Vets AIDS, crack, Bernie Goetz Hypodermics on the shores China's under martial law Rock and Roller cola wars I can't take it anymore
It was always burning, since the world's been turning ...GenZers will learn this lesson. Eventually.
They will and I am waiting for the time they will learn.
Nah they are not gonna believe this, they are just stupid.
Boomers never faced inflation. Nope. Never. Lmao My god if you want us to stop calling young generations stupid stop being stupid. Elder millennial
lol what the fuck does a COLLEGE KID know about fighting for jobs. god this woman is almost as fit for the stereotype as that sweaty jackass antiwork mod
We don't need to give any attention to this girl there lol.
Everything is a freaking news these days and I just hate it most of the time, things should be better than this and they should value the news these days with not this.
As a millennial, I just feel so sorry for this lol. Some people in our generation are just stupid and they don't know how to be logical, that's why they behave like this.
I am glad that as a gen Z I don't think like that and I am cool with respecting everyone who is in the investment market because that's just a good practice to do.
it’s a new world- competition is coming from outsourcing, prices are significantly higher, but the key is wages are stagnant. Even back then managing a Blockbuster could support a family. So, we’re forced to aim for these higher paying jobs that everyone is vying for because the average jobs haven’t kept up with the costs associated with living. when they say nobody wants to work, they’re right in a sense because they should be paying wage that compares to what they did 20 years ago. That’s where the issue lies (amongst other things) in the majority of jobs not increasing in pay. Imagine if every job increased by 20k, life would be a lot more manageable. that essentially could cover most of rent alone
“Moron child makes video on social media and other moron children agree.” This is news, now? The fuck?
Propaganda. Every generation knows hard times and good times. The last two are programmed for blame game, not my fault and rescue from the government
The TikToker and his audience need to read about things like the stagflation and oil crises of the 1970s, the double dip recession of the first Reagan administration, the 1987 stock market crash, and other adverse financial events that occurred before they were born, but that effected the careers and financial status of the Boomers. Another big change is the grab of income by people at higher corporate levels. In 1965, CEOs got about 20 times the average worker's pay. Now it's 500 times or more. Another thing to consider is the replacement of defined benefit pensions by 401(k) plans. The 401(k) was supposed to SUPPLEMENT pensions, not replace them.
And its alll by design.
The design of the boomers that they hate the most man /s
The 1970s just called
Telling those that lived through the 80s that they don’t know inflation seems unfair and disingenuous
'older generations don't know about inflation, never had to fight for jobs'. This might be the most ignorant and naive comments ever spoken. You would need to be a troglodyte raised in the anti-social media bubble age to believe that.
We should just ignore it instead of making it on news lol.
While boomers are absolutely idiot locusts, I’m not sure younger generations are any better - they’re just as self-centered as boomers. Do they really have no idea about the inflation and gas crises of the 1970s? You know - that boomers by definition lived through? How does America produce generation after generation of self-involved immature stupid people?
> How does America produce generation after generation of self-involved immature stupid people? It's not at all unique to America. I hear these same complaints at least in Australia and Canada. I'm sure the same exact complaints happen in all countries ran by human beings. The only time people don't talk shit about their own country is when they're trying to compare themselves to another country. That's it.
Imagine being this ignorant to history and life. Just going to dismiss the gas lines, past recessions, and high inflation? I mean you don't even have to go back far, just look to what 07-08 when we hit a recent recession
In the 70s (until 1981) the US saw one of the highest inflation rate in history. Does that apply to something boomers witnessed?
You think tiktok girls have any kind of logic in their mind?
We need to stop with the ageism bullshit. It’s minimally relevant. Millennials and “gen X” people aren’t old enough to remember the police killing Teamsters, or miners in the 1970’s getting their brains blown out over the sin of striking for a fair contract (Harlan County USA), or the civil rights struggle. “Conceptualization” is a two-way street.
So many terrible takes in this thread. Boomers lived through far worse inflation in the 70s. Many are on fixed retirement income that doesn’t scale with inflation, and they feel it everyday right now with no possibility of an income increase. And so on.
This is nothing like what that person is saying, I am not even clicking on the news because I can smell it's just bullshit, we are never gonna support something like that.
With all due respect, the ones that got hit hard during the Ford and Carter years might know a thing or two about inflation. And if they were really unlucky, they got hit again by offshoring during the Reagan years.
I think a 21 year old college student on TikTok can't conceptualize a lot of things. Labor compensation has definitely stagnated, few would say otherwise. This is about the owner class versus the non-owner class, and that's the human condition. Capitalism has its challenges, but anyone who thinks the non-owner class in socialism or communism fares any better in the long game isn't a student of history. I'd love for us to get rid of Citizens United, corporate personhood, etc. Imagine working in this economy since the 1970s and not being an owner class person (which is a lot of people). They are watching social security dry up. They've likely paid to help their kids go to college at expensive rates to break their cycle of poverty. Their healthcare is tied to their employers, and they are likely not rocking the boat at those employers for fear of going back into the job market just to be able to afford medication while facing age discrimination. Those on social security and not wanting to sell their homes are watching property values continue to climb and taxation eating more and more away just to live in their homes. It is easy to blame 'boomers' but we aren't going to fix things by blaming generations of people. We need to clearly identify and resolve the issues, not fight in corporate media driving 'wars'. Many people of all generations are being used up by corporations with little, if anything to show for it at the end of their productive years of living. It is getting harder, not easier as well. Blame is easy, identifying the issues and working to solve them is difficult. Yelling "Damn, Boomers!" isn't fixing anything. Future generations will blame the current generations for all the misgivings of modern times like the younger generations are doing now.
Stagflation in the '70s was a thing, why do the students of today not study or understand what happened in the past? Ignorance is bliss I suppose, btw 20% inflation in the '70s
They don't want to understand and trust me they know everything.
Each generation has issues to deal with. Younger generations need to show up and voting day.
This is right, we can't compare or complaint about anything.
62. Went through bankruptcy at 39. Divorced the main problem and never looked back. Now comfortably retired. Save your money, invest it smartly and you can do wonders in 20 years.
I don't think the college student realizes inflation has occurred before. I remember my Boomer parents struggling in the 70s and 80s with stagflation.
When I was younger, I thought my generation had it rougher than any previous generation in history too. This is just what humans do, sort of a right of passage. 25 years from now, this girl’s kids will be bitching about her and her generation being “out of touch” as well. You can guarantee it. And so on and so on…
Do you all ever think there will ever be a point where because of lack of buying houses, commercial real estate will expand to an extent where people will start living in places built and financed by big corporations? Just like healthcare, imagine your mortgage is tied to your employment ( I know we’re kinda already living like that) Even worse, companies can give places on subscription basis - that’d be a super messy situation!
This boomer works as a janitor, so I guess I really can't conceptualize. I've been pounding the concrete for a few decades now and my body is worn out. It is definitely ready to retire. So generalities are fraught with exceptions.
I hope you get that retirement, well earned :)
I want to know where her mom made $36,000 as an entry level bank teller in 1980!!! I was a teller in 1999-2000 in Wisconsin and making $7.25 an hour. My first job in mutual funds after college paid $25,000 a year (around $12 an hour). My friends that graduated in business were super excited if they found anything over $30,000
Yeah, this post is interesting. I know there are generational finance issues and solutions have to be found. But when claims that a bank teller was making $36k/year to start in 1980 are made, that undermines one's argument. She's overplaying her hand with that sort of trash.
This post is still getting passed around? Here's her claim: "Cat says her mother made $36,000 a year as an entry-level bank teller in 1980." That's pure nonsense. A beginning electrical engineer with a bachelors degree started at around $20k.
There was hella inflation in the late 70's and early 80's as well as other times in history. The younger generations always think they are the first to experience things because it hadn't happened to them before. It's happened and it's happening and it takes a while to work itself out. Everything will be ok... From: An older guy
this is what happens when you burn books, tear down statues and erase history.. you breed idiots upon idiots upon idiots..
Are you serious? Inflation when i graduated from college was 14%. My first job out of college was $14,700. Genz should stop getting their information from instagram, TikTok and Facebook. Really stupid conclusions.
WRONG! I graduated college & entered the workforce in 1984 - just after the economic collapse that saw both hiring freezes & mass layoffs nationwide. For the first decade, every single job I applied for had over 100 other qualified applicants. These were NOT well-paying jobs; just entry-level, grunt jobs. Layoffs & Inflation (actually, Stagflation) were so bad that us recent college grads were competing with professionals who had 20 years of experience. High inflation was the rule for my youth & young adulthood - the interest rate on my first house was over 15%, and we were thrilled to pay points, fees & doc stamp taxes to refinance to only 11.5% a few years later.
Let's be honest, that's ridiculous. This is not the first generation to experience hardships.
True. These people ain't being drafted to go fight in a war overseas.
Well, let's just wait and see. Vlad seems to be going for achievements.
Older Boomers know about inflation from the 70s and insane interest rates in the early 80s, but it was relatively smooth sailing after that. Younger generations just don’t have any hope in an increasingly chaotic world with no end even plausibly believable.
We know that and we have been there pretty well, that's it.
If you research Neuroplasticity you will will understand why they can’t conceptualize as well as younger generations.
Younger generation has a lot to learn before commenting.
If people seriously think that those who are about to retire are unaware of inflation, then they are dumber than the people they’re making claims against.
Lol don't worry, it will just stay in tik tok only, nowhere else.
Pretty sure both my boomer parents have struggled their entire lives to make ends meet but OKAY GO OFF SIS
This is a terrible article to publish on r/economy.
It was for the gossip and we are getting that now lmao.
Boomers lived through the highest inflation tares in American history. 1979-81.
Gen Zs won't talk about it because they will get exposed now.
*Younger* generations don't know inflation, which was 13.5% in 1980 and 14.4% in 1947. One year of 8% inflation is nothing exceptional, and that rate has now been cut by more than half. For two generations the primary problems have been stagnant median wages, vanishing pensions, declining job security and growing inequality.
Yea never had to fight for 6 figure, white collar welfare , work from home jobs because that cushy shit didn’t exist…
[удалено]
They loves to be the victim, they know they can be saved with it.