Oh, you millennials...

[FerrelGeek]

"They were suckered into the myth that they need to go to college to get a good job! ...also, shame on businesses for requiring college degrees for their good jobs!"

A reasonable edit. That being said, do agree or disagree with the point?

 

[allisolm]

There are a ton of stories on both sides of this and, when you compare stories, the numbers don't match up. 95% don't have enough saved but 1 in 6 has $100k. 66% have nothing saved but 47% have at least $15,000. 66% have nothing saved but 82% are saving for retirement. They're not saving enough but they are saving faster than Baby Boomers did.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/mone...-1-6-now-have-100-000-socked-away/1053803001/
http://time.com/money/4882463/millennials-saving-retirement-genx-baby-boomers/
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/05/1-i...000-heres-how-much-you-should-have-saved.html

Good to see articles that paint a rosier picture. Both of the ones I posted about were news items today and were, frankly, depressing.

 

[zinfamous]

Love how the boomers pulled up the ladder after themselves and condescendingly chide our generation for simply for not growing wings.

Well it really is our fault for not properly using the bootstraps that they kindly sold to us (at a discount, of course!)

 

[Zeze]

@allisolm
I'm not an millennial (gen x actually), but I'm surprised you bought into this Fox News/CNN blaming millennial hysteria.

• These kids I work with are bright. And these youngsters are most ambitious generation - look at all the startups, entrepreneurial work, etc.
• It's not their fault they're living in crappiest times with massive tuition corruption / real estate / healthcare costs. Your gen could buy houses so much easily and dad being the sole bread winner was POSSIBLE. You do not see that today. So they're absolutely, collectively working harder than your generation ever did in sheer hours just based on that fact.
• Do you honestly think your generation (assuming babyboomers) did anything particularly special and collectively wise to be where you are at? It's not YOUR doing that all you did was work in a factory for 30 years with uber stability and great wages

I'm disappointed that an ATOTer bought into this. Thought people would be more skeptical of 'mainstream' stuff in mass media.

 

[Sonikku]

Both of these things are consequences of millenials being possibly the poorest generation in recent American history.

But it's so much more fun to bash them as being worse than previous generations. 🙁 Acknowledging what you just said would mean owning some of the responsibility in cultivating the darker times they now find themselves in.

 

[Crono]

Good to see articles that paint a rosier picture. Both of the ones I posted about were news items today and were, frankly, depressing.

All of this is cyclical. 40-50 years ago everyone was worried about the flower child, hippie generation.

 

[zinfamous]

Millennials are the most over-covered generation in history as far as these kinds of stories and studies and data collection.

I think a lot of that also has to do with the fact that not only the internet now exists, but cable TV is a 250+ channel thing, compared to ~13 channels (or well, completely non-existent) back when the Baby Boomers were absorbing the ire of their parent's generation on a regular basis.

 

[Blackjack200]

Typical millennials. Nothing's our fault. The world owes us free sh*t. It's been 3 minutes since I posted my last selfie. OOOOMMMMGGGGG!! I have 26,736 friends and only 2 liked my post!!!!! PAY ATTENTION TO MMEEEEEE!!!! Does this snapchat filter make me look cute?? Hey! Tide pod party at my place! That guy said something that I didn't like. He needs to be silenced! What gender am I today? I graduated with $75k in student loans and I can't find a job in Ancient Sumerian art; not fair! Curse my nihilistic life!

I have 4 millennial kids and the above pretty much sums up what they think of their peers. Though I honestly can't totally blame millennials. Their overindulging helicopter parents did a great job in making them the way they are. They were also suckered into the myth that they had to go to college to get a good job and no one gave them the guidance to tell them that most majors won't get them jack when they graduate. Businesses don't help either; requiring a 4 year degree for many positions when a 2 year program or even a tech school education would've sufficed.

So, I have genuine pity mixed with a decent amount of contempt.

A reasonable edit. That being said, do agree or disagree with the point?

Rereading your post, I'm honestly not sure what you're asking me to agree with. You start with a mish mosh of mocking millennials for their superficial behavior on social media, throw in an ugly trans-phobic comment, and then seem to mock them for making poor choices WRT their college educations.

On the first point, I don't particularly like the way most people behave on social media, part of the reason that I don't spend much time on Facebook or Instagram. I do use Twitter a bit on the train. By my own observation, millennials don't behave more or less poorly on these platforms than any other generation. It's worth noting that the way users engage these platforms is entirely predictable and they are mostly invented by Generation Xers and old Millenials.

On the trans comment, the only thing I'd suggest is that you consider how poorly comments like that make you look to anyone that engages with trans people on a regular basis and sees them as no different from any other marginalized group.

On the third point, the condescending attitude about millennials pursuing useless degrees in college, I don't think those attitudes rooted in anything but a desire to vilify a group of people who are facing a challenging job market and got their college degrees while funding for public colleges was being eviscerated. Most of the narratives about what they should have done instead have been discredited. Example: http://prospect.org/article/stem-shortage-myth

 

[JulesMaximus]

Things will surely get better for them now that Trump is in charge.

 

[allisolm]

@allisolm
I'm not an millennial (gen x actually), but I'm surprised you bought into this Fox News/CNN blaming millennial hysteria.

• These kids I work with are bright. And these youngsters are most ambitious generation - look at all the startups, entrepreneurial work, etc.
• It's not their fault they're living in crappiest times with massive tuition corruption / real estate / healthcare costs. Your gen could buy houses so much easily and dad being the sole bread winner was POSSIBLE. You do not see that today. So they're absolutely, collectively working harder than your generation ever did in sheer hours just based on that fact.
• Do you honestly think your generation (assuming babyboomers) did anything particularly special and collectively wise to be where you are at? It's not YOUR doing that all you did was work in a factory for 30 years with uber stability and great wages

I'm disappointed that an ATOTer bought into this. Thought people would be more skeptical of 'mainstream' stuff in mass media.

Here I am, backing slowly away and wishing for a much more peaceful day for zeze. Perhaps a meditation mantra would help.

 

[Exterous]

@allisolm

• It's not their fault they're living in crappiest times with massive tuition corruption / real estate / healthcare costs. Your gen could buy houses so much easily and dad being the sole bread winner was POSSIBLE. You do not see that today. So they're absolutely, collectively working harder than your generation ever did in sheer hours just based on that fact.
• Do you honestly think your generation (assuming babyboomers) did anything particularly special and collectively wise to be where you are at? It's not YOUR doing that all you did was work in a factory for 30 years with uber stability and great wages

I'm disappointed that an ATOTer bought into this. Thought people would be more skeptical of 'mainstream' stuff in mass media.

Crappiest times? I think a valid argument could be made that its not the easiest but its FAR better than those who grew up in the depression and then spent years dying in a fight against the Japanese and Nazis. Being drafted and forced to fight in Vietnam was probably less fun along with rampant inflation, gas shortages, and threat of nuclear destruction from the Soviets (we got pretty close to nuclear war a few times).

I'm not entirely sold on the 'working harder' aspect either. Even if more hours are spent at work that doesn't necessarily mean you are working harder. Things certainly have changed but millennials are far from the worst off generation of Americans.

 

[Zeze]

I'm not entirely sold on the 'working harder' aspect either. Even if more hours are spent at work that doesn't necessarily mean you are working harder. Things certainly have changed but millennials are far from the worst off generation of Americans.

Harder or productive or not.. wait, how can it be not when all women are mostly also working in a marriage? That alone wipes the floors of any argument against millennials being slackers. They have no CHOICE to do double income in most cases.

 

[Sonikku]

Posting in a millennial hating thread.

 

[turtile]

What you are going to see from this generation is going to be a massive wealth gap. Millennials are going to overtake Gen X when it comes to promotions once more Baby boomers retire and the passed down wealth from the high end is going to be huge. The other side will be barely making it, both parents/couple working just to get by.

The issue I see now is the fact that parents are not only absent because they both work one or two jobs, but they really never afford what it takes to care for children. The school district I work in has a poverty rate of around 40% yet the overall city has about 19% living at or below poverty. Basically, households with children or more than twice as likely to live in poverty. That is extremely scary.

And in elementary school range (children born during and right after the recession) are close to 60% poverty.

 

[MrSquished]

Wages stagnate and wealth gets concentrated in the hands of the very few more and more each year. What did we think was going to happen

 

[Charmonium]

I'm a boomer but I never bought into the mindset one normally associates with that group - company loyalty, nose to the grindstone, it's not what the company can do for you but what you can do for the company. Yeah, that's bullsh**. Treat me like a person with actual needs and emotions. Don't expect me to be your happy worker bee just because you gave me a job.

From that point of view, millenials are my peeps. The boomers made it too easy to feed us sh** sandwiches in terms of outsourcing, increased work hours, reduced benefits, etc, etc. Younger people need to demonstrate with brutal clarity that that sh** don't fly. Not any more.

 

[Belegost]

Worth pointing out that Boomers aren't doing much better

https://www.fool.com/retirement/gen...rs-retirement-woes-summed-up-in-5-statis.aspx

45% have no retirement savings'
Here's a terrifying nugget of data to wrap your hands around: based on IRI data, just 55% of respondents in its study had retirement savings in 2016, meaning 45% of baby boomers surveyed had absolutely nothing saved for retirement.

44% are lugging around debt
Based on a recent Urban Institute data project, more baby boomers than ever are hanging up their work gloves while still toting around sizable levels of debt. The study notes that the percentage of adults aged 65 and up with debt rose from 30% in 1998 to 44% by 2012. Furthermore, nearly a quarter of all retirees enter retirement with mortgage debt. The study pinpointed $24,500 as the median amount older adults owed in debt in 2012.

or:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/patric...ement-neither-is-the-government/#615063411a4d

Her research shows even high-income workers haven’t saved enough to fund comfortable retirements. In fact, the shortfall is around 30% for all income levels.

• 19.7% of retirees get 100% of their income from Social Security.

• A full third (33.4%) depend on it for 90% of their income.

• And 61.1% get at least half their income from Social Security.

At least Millenials have a few decades to work on things...

 

[Red Squirrel]

The issue is that costs of living are completely out of control compared to when our parents were our age. Everything keeps going up at an exponential rate. Hydro, natural gas, taxes, house prices/rent, insurance, groceries, gas for car. Everything. But the job market is slowly diminishing and salaries are stagnant. They raised minimum wage here to $15 and it has companies freaking right out. They can more than afford it, but they don't want to pay that much because it cuts into their profits, so now they are laying off people, cutting benefits etc.

On the flip side, as far as houses go, yeah they are more expensive, but the interest now is also way lower than it was in their day, so there's that I guess. My parents paid 80k for their house which was built when I was born. that same house now goes for close to 300k.

I consider myself lucky for having a job where I usually hit around 80k each year (depends on OT, etc) but lot of people arn't as fortunate as reality is there arn't that many good jobs that pay this much around here. What's crazy is even at 80k I should be making tons of extra money to put into savings but reality is I'm more or less just making it. I have a couple hundred bucks left over at the end of the month. All the bills eat into the rest.

 

[ViviTheMage]

Millennials are the most over-covered generation in history as far as these kinds of stories and studies and data collection.

Pretty sure this is what every generation says, we now have an online format so everyone gets to read it and be part of it.

 

[Loop2kil]

I think it's also our society in general, people(most generations) today think they 'deserve' everything that's materialistic and just buy it instead of saving any money. I see lots of folks driving $60k+ trucks/SUVs just to commute to work in, I see almost everyone with pricey new phones + unlimited plans, giant houses, boats, many many other luxury and unnecessary things. These are things where the people that have saved money for retirement didn't 'have' to have and didn't. I think a lot of the spending is simply and pathetically done to show off on social media, I see them posting their 'things' all the time knowing full well they're in debt up to their ears.

 

[Red Squirrel]

You know what the fix is?

Tax cuts. Specifically on savings and investments.

(That was sarcasm by the way)

Actually the fact that there are taxes on savings/investments is retarded. That money was already taxed when it was earned. Then they are taxing it again. There needs to be more tax breaks on the middle class, NO taxes on lower class, and more taxes on the upper class, and get rid of all the loopholes corporations use to not pay taxes. Corporations should be paying just as much taxes as the upper class individuals.

 

[DietDrThunder]

Actually the fact that there are taxes on savings/investments is retarded. That money was already taxed when it was earned. Then they are taxing it again. There needs to be more tax breaks on the middle class, NO taxes on lower class, and more taxes on the upper class, and get rid of all the loopholes corporations use to not pay taxes. Corporations should be paying just as much taxes as the upper class individuals.

Just curious of what you consider lower, middle, and upper class?

 

[Red Squirrel]

Just curious of what you consider lower, middle, and upper class?

I'm guessing there are specific definitions somewhere but I'd say lower class would probably be those making under 35k, middle would be like 100k and lower then everything else upper? I don't know what the actual real definition is though. Go with that. Really the biggest thing we should be doing is taxing the corporations, they are the ones that make billions of dollars, they should be contributing more to society. If they try to move to places that don't get taxed as much then just tax their products coming in. Small businesses (say under 1mil revenue per year) should also get decent breaks. Of course leave some experts to come up with actual specific numbers, I'm just saying the super rich should be contributing more to taxes and less rich should not be taxed as hard.

Most corporations now pay close to 0 taxes because of all the loopholes, offshoring of funds etc.

 

[ImpulsE69]

I'd say I care, but...I don't. I don't have kids...for good reason. I did my part 😛 I'm not sure how people haven't seen the writing on the walls for decades. It's easy to blame them, but it really isn't their fault. It was our generation that screwed up and made our kids our 'friends'. It was also our generation that took greed to the next level.

 

[VirtualLarry]

These are things where the people that have saved money for retirement didn't 'have' to have and didn't. I think a lot of the spending is simply and pathetically done to show off on social media, I see them posting their 'things' all the time knowing full well they're in debt up to their ears.

Does borrowing money from Mom, to buy PC parts, to discuss and "show off" them online, count? I may have done that, once or twice. *whistle*

(Note that I do live on my own, and pay my rent regularly with my own income.)

Edit: I'm paying $14/mo for a cell phone, and ~$10/mo for internet. I economize where I can.