interesting article..
Stereotypes of millennials are usually not flattering. However a series of new studies shows that their predicament is not of their own making, and that many problems faced by those born after 1980- such as unemployment, the cost of living crisis, crippling student debt and unaffordable housing- are a consequence of those who came before them.
Thanks to the baby-boomer generation, millennials are the first in the history of humanity to be worse off than those who came before.
In “A Generation of Sociopaths – How the Baby Boomers Betrayed America”, Bruce Cannon Gibney argues that by refusing to make the most basic (and fairly minimal) sacrifices, they have bequeathed their children a mess of epochal proportions.
Boomers did not address climate change when they could, gutted public investment in social programmes that would have benefited their children and grandchildren, and ushered in a new era of economic precarity that left their descendants poorer and more anxious.
To paraphrase Philip Roth, they ensured “socialism for us and capitalism for everyone else”.
Through government programmes such as social security and other entitlements, they ran up huge debts that are now absorbing the taxes paid by millennials.
With the US and many governments continuing to run eye-watering budget deficits to fund such benefits for the elderly, at far higher interest rates than before, it remains unclear how sustainable it all is.
“Because the problems Boomers created are growing not so much in linear as exponential terms, the crisis that feels distant today will, when it comes, seem to have arrived overnight.”
And generational inequality is leading to social tension. Jill Filipovic, in her book “OK Boomer, Lets Talk”, explains what she sees as the root of the intra-generational tension: millennials are leading worse lives than their parents did, and Boomers are to blame.
Data show that, as Filipovic puts it, “life at 30 for your average Millennial looks close to nothing like as good as life at 30 did for the average Boomer, and instead of constructive dialogue & action we see deflections such as attempts to blame immigration for all our problems, resulting in ongoing & dangerous racial & societal tensions”.
Baby-boomers’ true political legacy, she argues, was the Thatcher-Reagan revolution of the 1980s. This was a consolidation of benefits for the elderly, the lowering of taxes, and the shrinking of the social safety net for the young and disadvantaged. All this has resulted in ever greater generational inequality.
Studies in Australia and the UK show worsening livelihoods and social discontent for the youth, particularly in the decade after the financial crisis.
A report compiled by economists at the Resolution Foundation has laid out the extent to which Britain’s millennial generation (defined here as people born between 1982 and 2000) are worse off than previous cohorts were at the same stage of life.
The authors found that millennials born in the late 1980s earned, on average, 8% less at the age of 30 than their counterparts from previous generations.
The audit also found that the typical weekly pay of graduates aged 30-34 fell by 16% in real terms between 2007 and 2023. And according to research from the House Buyer Bureau, UK house prices are currently sitting at 8.8 times the average earnings. This is an all-time record, and has more than doubled since the 1970s.
In Australia, the latest Scanlon Report, which maps social cohesion, says that almost half of 18- to 42-year-olds – that is millennials and Gen Z – said they were “barely getting along financially”, and the same amount believed the things they do in life are worthwhile only a little or only some of the time. Meanwhile they see the generation before enjoy their ‘protected status’ while asserting that millennials just don’t know how to manage their affairs properly.
Of course, not everything can be blamed on one previous generation. One should not equate inadequate progress with total failure. The Boomers didn’t even come close to creating a good world for their children — but they didn’t inherit a perfect world from their parents, either. It’s just that the boomer generation in particular appear to have had no issues in protecting themselves at the expense of their descendants.
There can be no doubt how difficult the current malaise of generational inequality, high house prices, high cost of living, high debt and stagnant wages makes life for the young. Combined with existential issues such as the climate crisis, collapse of the global order, and the current trend of “blaming immigration”, this means that for large swathes of those born after 1980, it is often hard to have any hope at all.
There is no argument against the world being financially harder for the younger people now or any household without 2 solid incomes
