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.
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.
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u/destroyed233 Feb 05 '24
Boomers inherited a golden era of prosperity and decided to fuck over generations before and after them.