Boomers never saw it bad till the very end of life.
I don’t know, if you watch things like Network, you’ll see places where I’m not so sure. The more I watch older movies and read, I get the sense things were not rosy for every boomer. The 70s sounded like they sucked balls for quite a few people, in fact. Stagflation? Fuck that noise.
economies were more cyclical then though and there we were at the height of social safety nets. In addition there was progress in societal things (civil liberties) and efficiency gains were reflected in pay. I mean what we have today is just nuts. The 2008 drop pretty much went down to the 2000 one as far as low point and outside of the market it has not been good at all except ironically for a blip around covid. 25 years is justs a nuts timespan. The great depression and ww2 were just a few years. During that time even just after the housing crash the prices were not as affordable as they were back then and honestly housing is such a major part of everyones life that it just dwarfs any other economic thing in a persons life with maybe health insurance being a competitor. I mean times were tough and yeah in some cases the mom had to pick up a job but it is nothing like the everyday reality of the last quarter decade.
All I know is my safety net wasn’t much. If I went long enough being laid off, I might have had to move my family back into my parent’s house. My wife had a teaching position during some of my layoffs, but didn’t cover a whole lot more than her college loans.
Thankfully both of us kind of have the almost stereotypical Gen X attitude about the economy and the view that most all of those safety nets were long gone before we started and so we try to live well within our means and then some - pensions, unions, health care, etc…that was rugpulled even on a lot of boomers, possibly some in the Silent Generation, too. Outsourcing, downsizing, offshoring, privatization - all that was well under way as a galaxybrained idea of the money masters way back in the 80s when we were still in elementary school, so we had few delusions about some kind of 1950s style living…we also both have hazy memories of things being really bad in the 1970s and stories from grandparents about their very hazy memories of the Great Depression.
If my wife and/or me lived like some choose to live - buying way more house/renting upscale apartment than you can really sustain if you even miss one month of work, buying new cars every so many years, etc…things would be a lot more worrisome through all these downturns. It’s bad enough as is without heaps and heaps of high-interest debt weighing on you.
Even though in my view, I think SS, Medicare and Medicaid should not be fucked with, we both plan on not necessarily getting any of it because all along, plenty of politicians keep threatening to take it away.
I don’t think things are much better for Gen Y or Gen Z. They may, collectively, get huge amounts of inheritance passed down to them, and I recently read that Gen Y is now further ahead than previous generations, also collectively. But it seems a great deal of trust has been eroded in our institutions, in the notion of getting ahead and getting a fair deal, etc…I was hoping Gen X and Gen Y might reinvigorate the notion of B corps and co-ops, especially in the mid-00s, early teens. I don’t think that really panned out.
definately not better for millenials or gen Z. At least I would not trade forward but I would totally trade backward on my birthdate. Inheritance is great if your rich enough but for the average person it might be a slight help like downpayment on a house but is not going to help you get through day to day. If anything its a sucking away of any middle class generational wealth they managed to obtain. For many there is no inheritance option or what little there is cannot cover costs. Completely agree on co-ops and B corps.
I think the script has flipped for Gen Y, at least collectively. It’s possible they may be the richest generation in history, depending on the wealth transfer…
Im suuuuppppeeerrr skeptical about fortune as a source but I can’t read that as I don’t have a subscription. I have seen the economy and I would not have wanted to start later. If anything my do over thing would have been to not to go to school so much and start earning sooner.
I’ve seen a few other outlets talking about it too, not just Fortune. Yeah, again, it would be the aggregate and not everyone’s experience. And it’s hard to calculate the harm of the formative years for a given age range - if you tried to enter the market just as 2008/2009 crash came…that’d be something you’d not soon forget, unless you had a cushy home life you could fall back on.
I remember trying to find just a summer job and work-study job in the early 90s “jobless recovery” - and there was just a real dearth of any job, even the most menial of jobs [1]- and that made an impression, maybe even more so than the later layoffs I had to endure. And 2008/2009 was worse.
[1] I ended up working for Manpower at various shit jobs; the longest of which was at a Ross warehouse. The next longest stint was helping to round out housekeeping at really cruddy hotels. I did put in an application at a McD’s and several other fast-food places, but didn’t get hired. The job market blew really hard for a few years there.
Yeah work study was scarce but honestly folks I know who got it got paid wereas in the new millenium feels like a lot of that became unpaid. Late nineties was the time I wish I took more advantage of. Fast food is a good example though. In high school it was the job no one wanted but everyone could get. minimum wage to start but if you showed up regularly, ontime and sober you generally got at least a quarter an hour more and then regular nickle raises. min wage was 4 bucks though so its not as slight as it sounds. You go to a place and ask for an application then fill it out and it was 100% getting a job in the 80’s with fast food. Its actually from millenial friends that I learned that was not a thing for them. I was working in the late nineties based on my skills of knowing how to navigate windows and search the internet and they hired folks who could not really do that.
I don’t know, if you watch things like Network, you’ll see places where I’m not so sure. The more I watch older movies and read, I get the sense things were not rosy for every boomer. The 70s sounded like they sucked balls for quite a few people, in fact. Stagflation? Fuck that noise.
economies were more cyclical then though and there we were at the height of social safety nets. In addition there was progress in societal things (civil liberties) and efficiency gains were reflected in pay. I mean what we have today is just nuts. The 2008 drop pretty much went down to the 2000 one as far as low point and outside of the market it has not been good at all except ironically for a blip around covid. 25 years is justs a nuts timespan. The great depression and ww2 were just a few years. During that time even just after the housing crash the prices were not as affordable as they were back then and honestly housing is such a major part of everyones life that it just dwarfs any other economic thing in a persons life with maybe health insurance being a competitor. I mean times were tough and yeah in some cases the mom had to pick up a job but it is nothing like the everyday reality of the last quarter decade.
All I know is my safety net wasn’t much. If I went long enough being laid off, I might have had to move my family back into my parent’s house. My wife had a teaching position during some of my layoffs, but didn’t cover a whole lot more than her college loans.
Thankfully both of us kind of have the almost stereotypical Gen X attitude about the economy and the view that most all of those safety nets were long gone before we started and so we try to live well within our means and then some - pensions, unions, health care, etc…that was rugpulled even on a lot of boomers, possibly some in the Silent Generation, too. Outsourcing, downsizing, offshoring, privatization - all that was well under way as a galaxybrained idea of the money masters way back in the 80s when we were still in elementary school, so we had few delusions about some kind of 1950s style living…we also both have hazy memories of things being really bad in the 1970s and stories from grandparents about their very hazy memories of the Great Depression.
If my wife and/or me lived like some choose to live - buying way more house/renting upscale apartment than you can really sustain if you even miss one month of work, buying new cars every so many years, etc…things would be a lot more worrisome through all these downturns. It’s bad enough as is without heaps and heaps of high-interest debt weighing on you.
Even though in my view, I think SS, Medicare and Medicaid should not be fucked with, we both plan on not necessarily getting any of it because all along, plenty of politicians keep threatening to take it away.
I don’t think things are much better for Gen Y or Gen Z. They may, collectively, get huge amounts of inheritance passed down to them, and I recently read that Gen Y is now further ahead than previous generations, also collectively. But it seems a great deal of trust has been eroded in our institutions, in the notion of getting ahead and getting a fair deal, etc…I was hoping Gen X and Gen Y might reinvigorate the notion of B corps and co-ops, especially in the mid-00s, early teens. I don’t think that really panned out.
definately not better for millenials or gen Z. At least I would not trade forward but I would totally trade backward on my birthdate. Inheritance is great if your rich enough but for the average person it might be a slight help like downpayment on a house but is not going to help you get through day to day. If anything its a sucking away of any middle class generational wealth they managed to obtain. For many there is no inheritance option or what little there is cannot cover costs. Completely agree on co-ops and B corps.
I think the script has flipped for Gen Y, at least collectively. It’s possible they may be the richest generation in history, depending on the wealth transfer…
https://fortune.com/2024/10/21/millennials-outperforming-baby-boomers-gen-x-assets-earnings/
Im suuuuppppeeerrr skeptical about fortune as a source but I can’t read that as I don’t have a subscription. I have seen the economy and I would not have wanted to start later. If anything my do over thing would have been to not to go to school so much and start earning sooner.
I’ve seen a few other outlets talking about it too, not just Fortune. Yeah, again, it would be the aggregate and not everyone’s experience. And it’s hard to calculate the harm of the formative years for a given age range - if you tried to enter the market just as 2008/2009 crash came…that’d be something you’d not soon forget, unless you had a cushy home life you could fall back on.
I remember trying to find just a summer job and work-study job in the early 90s “jobless recovery” - and there was just a real dearth of any job, even the most menial of jobs [1]- and that made an impression, maybe even more so than the later layoffs I had to endure. And 2008/2009 was worse.
[1] I ended up working for Manpower at various shit jobs; the longest of which was at a Ross warehouse. The next longest stint was helping to round out housekeeping at really cruddy hotels. I did put in an application at a McD’s and several other fast-food places, but didn’t get hired. The job market blew really hard for a few years there.
Yeah work study was scarce but honestly folks I know who got it got paid wereas in the new millenium feels like a lot of that became unpaid. Late nineties was the time I wish I took more advantage of. Fast food is a good example though. In high school it was the job no one wanted but everyone could get. minimum wage to start but if you showed up regularly, ontime and sober you generally got at least a quarter an hour more and then regular nickle raises. min wage was 4 bucks though so its not as slight as it sounds. You go to a place and ask for an application then fill it out and it was 100% getting a job in the 80’s with fast food. Its actually from millenial friends that I learned that was not a thing for them. I was working in the late nineties based on my skills of knowing how to navigate windows and search the internet and they hired folks who could not really do that.