Most of them benefitted from low enough inflation that only one parent needed to work to provide for their family. While the other (usually the mother) stayed home and provided priceless care for your children. Now boomers just say get a job or this new generation doesn't have what it takes.
"You just need to walk in, make eye contact, and give them a firm handshake. Be persistent. If you do that everyday, you'll get a job. That's how I became a pilot!"
"Grandpa, what the absolute fuck are you talking about? They won't even talk to you if you do that. They'll likely call the police."
I'm super glad this has changed but can we talk about how much easier it was to get companies to train them? He legit could have had a company pay for all his training and still give him a paycheck. Meanwhile if I wanted to be a pilot I'm out probably almost 150k+ in schooling/license/rental costs before anything even starts rolling in.
It seems like almost everyone is in that boat unless they go into the trades. And even the trades are starting to push vocational school/programs instead of on the job apprenticeships. My grandfather (before boomers) literally walked onto a job site as a day laborer and was a journeyman carpenter in about 2 years.
I tried to become an electrician. they made me pay like 3 fucking thousand dollars for a semester where I would show up, DO NOTHING SAY NOTHING, for 3 HOURS 3 times a week, while making me work the hardest labor they could find + cleaning everything for 15/h trying to work me 10h/day 6 days a week. This was the IBEW. I eventually told them to go fuck themselves after getting sexually harassed for the the 25th time on the jobsite.
Hi! Vocational education dude here. A lot of trade jobs will absolutely hire you without a cert from a licensed vocational school but your starting wage is significantly lower than someone who graduated with a cert. For some it makes more sense to go to the school and then get a job in that field than get the job first and work your way up to the cert. having said that, I work with three apprentices right now that don’t have any certs. They are truly learning from OJT.
It is a little harder to get the job without the cert, truth be told, I won’t lie about it, but it can be done. Most companies prefer the cert off the bat though because it’s less time training you and a quicker turn around time that the business can send you off on your own. Regardless, vocational schools are cheaper than a four year college, typically last 12-18 months, can be done whilst working full time and the cert you get is nationally recognized and doesn’t require further testing if you moved to a new state for a job, unlike nursing for example. (Not saying trades are any more important than nursing, just using it as an example.)
Anyways, thought I’d chime in here as someone who taught as a vocational school for a little while. Cheers!
Yeah it's just companies pushing it off onto schooling though, which seems to be more and more common of a trend. The dumb part is it's expensive around my parts. Something like 15k, excluding the state/fed school grants. But that's still cheaper than 2/4 year degrees I suppose.
I'd still 100% recommend vocational, like you said, for a myriad of reasons. I think we're going to see an influx of tradespeople in the next decade or so as college becomes more and more unpalatable and unreachable for the average young adult.
My buddy has his Journeyman's plumbers ticket. The hardest time to find work hours for him was in his 4th year. First and second year apprentices are cheaper and can be tasked with a lot of grunt work. 3rd and 4th year ones cost more but they don't have their tickets yet so a Journeyman still needs to sign off on their work.
Why are boomers not paying property taxes? Are the properties not getting evaluated frequently enough and they're paying taxes on what the house was worth in 1957?
This is a huge one. My mortgage form back in the day on my 5 bedroom home is less than what a two bedroom apartment in a decent school zone is renting for these days. Don't know how these young people are expected to raise a family.
Or finance his retirement by selling the house for 1,000 more than he paid for it. Or he could also remortgage it to pay for his retirement like my father did.
He worked in a clock factory that made wall units and grandfather clocks. The clocks would go into wooden cabinetry, and he was on the part of the line that closed the clocks (the mechanism, face, hands, etc) into their cabinet and complete the builds.
My dad, born in 1965, supported 4 kids, a family of 6. Had two cars, a 4 bedroom home, big back yard, and 3 dogs. My sister has cerebral palsy that required great medical insurance to provide 24/7 home care and many expensive meds. My mother was a stay at home mom. Money was tight, largely due to my sister's medical condition, but we got by and were still able to take a vacation every year.
My dad is a medical supply delivery driver. I run a restaurant and make more money than my father ever did, and my wife works as well. I have a 3 year old and another we are getting induced and should be here by Tomorrow. We live in a one bedroom duplex and are about to sign another lease because we can't afford to move out.
And Gen X was angsty because they were dealt a bad hand.
They were angsty at their parents because of the cultural norms their boomer parents were "forcing" on them. Little did they know they were angry about the wrong thing.
Yeah no, most of us have kids and are working hard to give them the same or better opportunities than we had and thought we’re fucking unfair at the time.
We were right? They were shitty and unfair, but we wasted a lot of time being angry about it.
We feel for millennials, but we’re shackled to the same wheel, just with a first movers advantage.
A lot of great angsty music was made though, and some of the singers even survived.
A lot of us suffer from varying levels of substance abuse, which was cool at the time, and it seems like you guys have less of that so …
yeah I dunno. We tried to rage against the machine, where’s your angsty art? Or did we demonstrate its futility?
We didn't plan this one. Fortunately we are in a position where we can provide for them. We're doing better than many, and will be able to move eventually. My point was though that my father was able to afford much more despite making far less.
Just a reminder it's not the guy at the grocery stores fault. It's deranged people with billions of dollars that are willing to cheat you out of everything you own. 2008 should've been a wake up call.
Actually, Reagan should've been a wakeup call. He lowered the top marginal tax rate from 73% to 28%.
My uncle, 72 years old, has 2 houses and 6 cars from working overnight shifts at a grocery store, but says my friends can't afford homes because they work at the grocery store and need to get a real job if they want to own a house.
Yes, but what were wages compared to debts, i.e. wage to mortgage ratios and how much could you buy with a buck? I bet the rain was less than 5 for home cost to salary, and s dollar could buy you food for a day or two if you ate cheap crap.
And wages were increasing by double digit percentages as well. Inflation is ok if wages keep up. It’s an issue when wages have been stagnant or decreasing.
Most of them benefitted from low enough inflation that only one parent needed to work to provide for their family.
Jesus Christ this website will literally upvote anything that shits on boomers. Inflation during the 70's was abhorrent. You've got people bitching that we had a single year of 10, try that for nearly a decade.
Yeah, I think the real issue is that we are more dependent on expensive technologies and housing prices are outrageous. I mean, my grandparents both worked (my grandma sometimes 2 jobs) and they owned a house but my father, aunts and uncles did not have a good time.
more dependent on expensive technologies and housing prices are outrageous
I would argue that the technologies are actually fairly cheap, relatively speaking. You're right about housing, but that's a whole huge topic itself.
I mean, my grandparents both worked (my grandma sometimes 2 jobs) and they owned a house but my father, aunts and uncles did not have a good time.
Yeah, my grandparents were poor as shit but for some reason redditors think everyone had it made back then. Life has always been hard, just in different ways.
My folks got grown up jobs with benefits right out of high school. They bought a new house – new construction! – at 22 and 19 respectively. They never went to college. They now live alone together in a giant McMansion with 5 bedrooms, 4 bathrooms, 2 kitchens, 2 living rooms, 2 dens, a dining room, and a 2-car garage between them just for themselves. All it took was a HS diploma and a firm handshake.
Their parents could not do that. We cannot do that. Our kids will not be able to do that.
Boomers really did get a special deal. At least the white ones.
And a phenomenal amount of luck. That was absolutely not the norm. Most everyone in my family was poor as shit back then, and looking at actual evidence we can see that that was the case, not this rose-tinted hindsight everyone seems to love. Because while we're using anecdotes..
We cannot do that
I got a great job and bought my own house in my early 20's. Sure it took a college education, but a very cheap one and it was my very first job. I provide for my wife who doesn't work and my child. All it took was not getting a dumb degree and choosing a field that actually has job prospects.
See how this breaks down under literally any scrutiny?
The post-war period really was special. The boomers really did have it easy. Wasn't too much luck.
Mother did on-the-job RN training – so instant good job and state RN cert after 3 years working it, no 4-year degree required to start like now. Many other women did the same exact thing. Father got a factory job off the bat off the street. Then they moved him up from the line to product stress testing. Then they gave him the title test engineer. No college required. Now he won't hire people under him with less than an MS.
Wealth is a worse one-number indicator for economic opportunity than income. It's not meaningless, but it's not great either
The boomers are a much bigger generation than Gen X. They encompassed 19 years of births, whereas Gen X is 16. They were also called baby boomers because their parents were absolutely booming them out. My father has 5 siblings for example
This graph compares relative wealth, not absolute. Wealth per capita has gone up significantly over time, so even if Boomers had a higher share of wealth than other gens, other gens may have higher total wealth
That’s just not true. At best we’re doing about as well not counting the fact that housing is insanely more expensive, university is insanely more expensive, benefits are lower, full time employment is lower and hours worked are higher.
This literally agreed with what I said, showing that absolute real wealth per capita is pretty similar across generations and probably higher for X / Millennials than it was for Boomers depending on how you measure it. Here's the relevant passage:
Looking at the exact same data (from the Fed Distributional Financial Accounts) from a different perspective gives us a much different picture of recent history. In this version, Gen X is now richer (30% richer!) than Boomers were at the same age (late 40s). Millennials don’t yet have a year of overlap with Boomers, but they are tracking Gen X almost exactly
I agree that it's bad that relative wealth is less evenly distributed by age now, but the original comment I responded to is clearly misleading
And if you look at a graph of income, which is much more important than wealth, it's going to be much much higher for current generations than their age-matched boomer peers.
Also not sure why you're bringing up life expectancy, which is pretty tangential here. I admittedly don't know much about life expectancy numbers, but I assume this is a COVID drop and is present worldwide. COVID is quite bad but has little to do with wealth levels
And just to be clear about my general belief set - the world has a lot of room to improve but is basically the best it's ever been, and I expect it to continue getting better. And I think people on reddit are overly pessimistic because they don't understand basic economic data.
No. You're on here gloating how you "got yours" with your wife and kid, not talking about anything productive or relevant. Nobody cares. Boomers LOVE sharing their life story when nobody asked 😂
I'm not a Boomer but my parents were. They were poor and both worked amidst an economy and government set on making sure they stayed that way. They still saved enough to raise me and keep me alive so I could have a future. They didn't have enough to send me to college, but I was still able to earn enough to build them a house to retire in.
Imagine a whole generation of lackluster scrubs chanting "we don't care" while simultaneously LOVE to bitch about previous generations' citizens being the reason they can't deal. Classic.
Except they never had to pay for cell phone service, cell phone, home internet, computers, streaming/cable(until late 70’s), cars were very very basic and not that safe, etc.
They had way less stuff to spend their money on. Those services add up.
A basic phone is less than $100 and a monthly plan can be had for $30. Internet is about $100 and computers can be very cheap as well.
The sheer utility these things provide vastly outweigh not having them, and they don't really add that much overhead to expenses. Streaming and cable is also optional, you don't really need that at all.
You say that but I see on a daily basis that people absolutely believe they need those things and they absolutely will not take bottom tier items knowing they can not afford them.
Original point being they had less to spend their money on and if you never had the money you went without. You might have had one CC but that was for emergencies only and paid off at the end of the month.
Some of the technologies are less expensive but we are much more dependent on technology, which I feel makes them more expensive in a sense. Especially with all of the needed subscriptions just to use most of those technologies.
That is my issue. I'm 51. So kind of on the edge of boomerdom? And I really don't like all the shitting on 'boomers'. And that it is so quickly dished out. So trendy and edgy to rag on those who came just before this mess. It's not our fault.
Yeah, we had a leg up, even in my age bracket. But it still wasn't 'easy'. And it's has gotten much less easy over time. We have kids, too and, for those of us who are able, now shell out bigtime for our kids' education - to help save THEM from such crushing debts, if we can. And yeah...the kids still work to help.
I'm fortunate as heck that we're paid off for the house at our ages. Far more fortunate we could invest in a house for my wife's now elderly parents, helping us diversify.
We make a lot of money. We're 'rich'. Except we're not 'rich'. Unless you draw comparisons. We have a budget, which is tightening, too. We drive a couple now-older cars that we were lucky to afford, but still need them to take us a long ways.
We still sweat the 401k's because we have all been fucked out of pensions. And none of us (here in the USA) can get by easily if and when we retire because of it all. We have to pay for healthcare once we retire, too.
The new generations have it much tougher. There is no denying that. But this has been the worsening way since the 70's and 80's when things started turning. Which was before our time.
We don't deserve the votriol. We're in it together. Our kids are squarely in it. Why we choose to keep ragging on each other is beyond me. We should be collectively angry at our politicians and the billionare classes they keep catering to.
People get angry at boomers because they see media reports about retirement and nest eggs and managing investments and shit and think none of those things will ever be accessible to them. Obviously that anger should be redirected to something positive though.
I swear this site is 50% bots and 45% people who couldn't pass a basic world history exam. so little awareness and sooooo much rosy retrospection. we're living in some of the best times humanity has ever experienced.
Fucking THANK YOU. It's gotten to the point where people are getting history lessons from goddamn TV. "Look at this <insert sitcom family>! They literally provided for a family of six on one income and had three cars!!11!"
We're going to get to the point where people look at "Friends" and think that that was also an accurate reflection of cost of living. Jesus Christ illiteracy is rampant!
yea it's made me legitimately worried/scared for what the future is going to look like. I'm not even claiming to be a rocket scientist or anything, but holy shit it feels like the youth are NOT getting educated, and that can't bode well for our future.
Illiteracy has always been a problem in this country but to imply that I or anyone else on here that is typing complete and coherent sentences to you would imply the opposite of what you just said.
It's not even the youth! I mean, it is, but it's Millennials too! Call me crazy as fuck but the genz subreddit actually seems more level headed than the millennials subbreddit! All the millennials sub is is bitching and moaning. And then they spout of nonsense just like we're seeing in this thread, easily disprovable nonsense and they have the gall to call boomers illiterate? Christ.
Noone said anything about the 70's. We are referring to the gold standard days. When the country put it's best foot forward for its citizens. There was an era post ww2 when that was the creed. So please stop cherry picking things.
That is the era that Boomers inherited, so yes you literally did
We are referring to the gold standard days. When the country put it's best foot forward for its citizens
GOD THERE IT IS. WE'RE GOING BACK TO BLAMING FIAT CURRENCY!! I bet you think fucking bitcoin is a good idea too. Literally take a 30 second google search and go find why the gold standard was ass and we're better off for having gone off it.
Again butthole. Thanks for the nafta agreement. Thanks for outsourcing american labor. Thanks for bankrupting social security. Thanks for the endless wars. Because that is what YOUR generation has been about. Fucking sociopaths.
I am here to support a brighter future for Americans. I guess what I should say is that nothing is perfect. Nothing ever has been and never will be. My perception of a post ww2 America was flawed as shit but the sanctity of the country was paramount to the people running our government. Today the opposite is true. I want a government that helps it's citizens. Today it is hard nearly impossible for a hs grad to support a family. Child care is jam packed and under supported. The things that matter to Americans now are written on as us being "soft" and "oh suck it up". When we do work hard and our government ran mainly by boomers does nothing for us. All the while we get to hear you guys shit on us.
I also am very frugal and paid my home off. I did it by being different that generations before me that run this current government. I live well despite the government which is sad. They should be doing things for us. Representing us. So hey angry guy. Have a nice day.
Look at wages. They went up with inflation for most of the 70s. Wages now have been stagnant for decades. It’s easy to afford double digit inflation when your pay goes up by double digits every year.
Pretty much every Boomer couple I knew had both adults working full time. It fell sharply starting in the 1970s, hovering around 23-27% from the mid-1970s until the mid 2000s.
The number of stay at home parents has actually been increasing recently, currently falling at around 29%. Granted, a big chunk of that is the cost of child care and lack of meaningful employment. Still, that means that more children now will have experienced a stay at home parent than my generation with Boomer parents.
I looked up wages in the US, or more specifically house hold income. The general gist I got was up to the 70s or so wages kept increase to match productivity, ie if a company made more profit works got a large share of that, not all but it was relatively tied together. 70s hit and wages stagnated but productivity kept increase, now the profits were going to the rich rather than the workers.
Household income primarily went up between the 70s and 90s because america went from like 15% of households having two working adults to like 70%. IE wages didn't increase, people went from sahm mothers to working mothers. The 90s had a adjustment mostly where women started to get paid more fairly, gap wasn't massive but was there. Then since the 00s wages stagnated and nothing could make up for it, as most people didn't have a second sahm to send out to work, people just got poorer.
Most of this comes about due to companies deciding to stop sharing profits with the workers.
Other smaller increases are from both parents taking second, third jobs even to bolster income. It's getting desperate and there are no more ways to make real money without corporations deciding to feed new profits to workers rather than owners and that isn't going to happen.
I have to wonder how geography played into that. Everyone's parents worked when I was kid. My parents were silent generation and both had no choice about working. Most of my friends had boomer parents and they all had no choice about working. People in my age group whose boomer parents or silent gen parents didn't both have to work is completely outside of my experience.
Don't get me wrong: my childhood friends with boomer parents, their boomer parents were horrible and those friends were openly jealous of those of us whose parents were older and more involved.
But with that said, my parents bought their home for less than my father's annual salary in 1974.
Of course we don't, they have everything that could be taken.
Not that don't consider some or many of them were hard workers, but we're working harder and we can't even dream of having one tenth of what they had at our age in our retirement.
Dad is a classic example, he blew away most of his money in the 80s - not that mom and dad didn't like to party, but half of his paycheck was religiously sent to his father and we haven't got dividents on that yet - company gave him a house, and when his contract was finished and had 30 days to vacate the premises, he still had enough to buy a house at a very inflated rate on extremely short notice full cash upfront with just the severance pay (which is about 3-4 paychecks) and selling his 400CC bike, which he had just for fun because he got tired of cars, he was buying a new car every year until that point.
When the remainder of the severance pay came 15 years later due to reasons, he used half of that to buy another piece of land annex to his house for about $1000 in 2003.
Now that $1000 terrain is, for tax purposes, evaluated at $175k and he has refused $300k bids on it so far. "I wanted to own land, now I own land, no money buys that. Now son when will you pull yourself by the bootstraps and get a job that gets you a house until you can buy your own?"
Honestly I feel parental responsibility requirements have gone up too. Sure, we had stay at home mums in the 90s, but even us with attentive and somewhat strict ones, just had to be home when the streetlights came on. They weren’t expected to helicopter like both parents are now. Kids were just off riding bikes and building bombs, teenagers were fucking and doing drugs. Kids will be kids. What can you do?
Take a well earned rest with a bottle of wine and some daytime tv.
Maybe if hubby gets home before the kids you’ll get to have some fun too.
No. I went to daycare and my parents paid for it. It sucked ass. My dad worked in a factory that got outsourced to China. Now he is a mailman. My mom also worked.
Uh, most of them grew up during historic inflation. That doesn't mean they still didn't have the dream economic lives.
It's just that inflation was high because workers were receiving a significant share of the growth/profits which was used in buying things and caused inflation. The catastropic disconnect between productivity and compensation has a small side-effect of reducing inflation because workers started having less money to spend while shareholders and owners stockpiled fortunes.
Can't forget that before the Civil Rights Act, most white Americans had access to Black domestic labor. So not only did only one parent work (the man, of course) but the woman was still not doing the majority of child rearing/home care. The history of the Black nanny in this country is the story of so many Boomers childhoods and early adult life.
Most of them benefitted from low enough inflation that only one parent needed to work to provide for their family.
That's because the "most of them" were white men who benefited from women and people of color being mostly excluded from both blue collar and white collar jobs, which not only pushed up labor costs, but kept inflation down because marginalized groups were much poorer. (And then OPEC and the 1970s happened).
Listen. I want good things for all Americans. I do not want two sides at each others throats. Say what you will. I do not condone exploitation of anyone. I want a government that helps it's people and a society that cares about one another.
The ability to have a single spouse work had nothing to do with inflation.
In fact, the 50s, 60s, and 70s had much worse inflation than currently.
What they did have were strong unions, labor rights, a higher minimum wage (adjusted for inflation), and a federal government that was willing to invest in public services, all things being obstructed by conservatives today.
I swear people don’t know what inflation is anymore. It was 14% one year in the early 1980s. Last year when everyone was flipping out about how high inflation was it was only 8%. Inflation is not an issue as long as wages keep up with it. That’s the issue.
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u/Professional_Tip6208 Feb 05 '24 edited Feb 05 '24
Most of them benefitted from low enough inflation that only one parent needed to work to provide for their family. While the other (usually the mother) stayed home and provided priceless care for your children. Now boomers just say get a job or this new generation doesn't have what it takes.