Millennials have to carry that financial burden, but most other generations had to make much bigger sacrifices. I'd take the financial struggles of the millennial generation over having to fight in WW2 and rebuilding the nation in the aftermath, which is what the Greatest Generation got tasked with.
Every generation faces difficult challenges, and the financial issues of the millennial generation are just a matter of national policy. Okay, so some activism is needed to change this. Every generation had to engage in activism to create a more equitable society, why should the millennial generation be the exception? I think the future looks very bright overall, although I can totally see why some millennials see only doom and gloom because of their personal situation.
Rebuilding what nation? The U.S. was unscathed and came out roaring. Everybody could get jobs, college was cheap, home ownership was a given.
And don't forget, millennials have been shouldering this global war on terror crap for the last 15 years. While WW2 was horrific, at least they were fighting for something they believed in, and at least it was over after 4 years. Oh and then add in the second worst financial crisis ever putting millions out of work, and crushing student loan debt in order to even participate in the workforce.
The greatest generation fought the greatest war, but their kids were the worst American generation we've ever had.
To be fair, that's largely because engagement was so low[1]. Under 10% of the population were college graduates. If we returned to those levels, costs would drop dramatically.
But so was living in small town/rural areas, something that is completely unfathomable to most people these days. Like college attainment, urbanization is an upward trend. The difficulty of trying to fit more and more people into a relatively fixed area is what is largely responsible for the increased difficulty of affording a home.
The real problem here is that we think we can do what they did, with our own unique twist on it. If we actually lived like they did, those would still be true today. But we expect more, and that comes with a cost.
The "real" problem here is that THEY think we can do what they did.
Want to get a job? Have to get a college degree, hence a lot more people in college.
Even with home ownership I don't think the issue is as simple as urbanization. I'd say it's more related to something like wage stagnation versus property value increases. Although I'm lucky enough to afford my own place, many of my friends can't because they can't afford to save enough because of rent prices... and it would take them 10 years to save even a down payment. That's just an example though.
In U.S., Canada, and Europe (in general) it seems like the best cities and even marginally great cities are filling up with foreign investors looking for an asset to hide their money in so their corrupt governments don't take it from them. Vancouver is the colloquial example here I think. Personally, I'd propose some sort of live-in requirement for all foreign-owned home real estate. If you're not living there or renting it out (which means rent would have to be affordable) then you should lose the property. I don't have an issue with anybody moving to the U.S. or anything, but actually come live here and don't just buy property to drive up housing costs for the people that actually live and work here. (FWIW this isn't something I deal with as I own my own place etc. etc. )
> Want to get a job? Have to get a college degree, hence a lot more people in college.
Respectfully, that's absolutely ridiculous. As you can see, even now those with degrees are only 30% of the population. The unemployment rate is nowhere near 70%, I can assure you.
I am willing to agree that the numbers have gone up because people fell for the marketing that told them they wouldn't find work without a degree, but that's entirely on them. We wouldn't give them sympathy if they bought an iPhone, that they couldn't afford, because Apple told them they had to have one.
> Even with home ownership I don't think the issue is as simple as urbanization.
It still comes down to supply and demand, and cities tend to be land-locked, leaving up the only way to expand. But as most people still desire detached homes, up is not an option to help with that market. Not to mention zoning issues, financial issues, etc. that can add considerable time to making upward growth available to those who are interested. Outside of that, the only thing that can give is on the demand side, but these cities continue to grow by leaps and bounds regardless.
Outside the cities, where supply is effectively unlimited and demand has waned in favour of urban living, we can find markets where houses have gone down in price.
> I'd say it's more related to something like wage stagnation
Which clearly dispels any myths that more education leads to higher incomes, so that isn't a justification for being there either, in case you were thinking it (many do, sadly).
> Vancouver is the colloquial example here I think.
I don't know why Vancouver gets all the attention. I think it is because Canada typically reports using mean, while most of the rest of the world use median. The mean average will tend to skew higher given the nature of the market, so it sounds scary to those not paying attention.
The median home price in San Francisco is about $1.1M USD[1]. The median home price in Vancouver is about $540,000 USD[2].
Now, the median income in Vancouver is about $20,000 USD per year lower than in SF, but $20K isn't anywhere near enough to cover an additional $560,000 on a mortgage. Not even close. So, in reality, the issue is far more apparent in SF than it is in Vancouver.
> Respectfully, that's absolutely ridiculous. As you can see, even now those with degrees are only 30% of the population. The unemployment rate is nowhere near 70%, I can assure you.
Yes, people are employed without a college degree, and they're working at McDonalds at or near minimum wage. I should have been specific: if you want a good job you need a college degree.
It still comes down to supply and demand, and cities tend to be land-locked, leaving up the only way to expand. But as most people still desire detached homes, up is not an option to help with that market. Not to mention zoning issues, financial issues, etc. that can add considerable time to making upward growth available to those who are interested. Outside of that, the only thing that can give is on the demand side, but these cities continue to grow by leaps and bounds regardless.
Sorry I still don't see how this means that urbanization is the issue.
> Which clearly dispels any myths that more education leads to higher incomes, so that isn't a justification for being there either, in case you were thinking it (many do, sadly).
A college degree absolutely leads to higher incomes. This has been studied and is a fact.
> Now, the median income in Vancouver is about $20,000 USD per year lower than in SF, but $20K isn't anywhere near enough to cover an additional $560,000 on a mortgage. Not even close. So, in reality, the issue is far more apparent in SF than it is in Vancouver.
I think the difference is that the reason home prices are what they are in San Francisco is because you have an accumulation of the most powerful companies in the most powerful industry on the planet. People are making a lot of money in San Francisco and there are a lot of jobs. There is some foreign investment, but people can also Why are home prices high in Vancouver?
So I'm not 100% sure how accurate this is... but it looks like more than 40% of residents in San Francisco are earning $100k +. What's that statistic for Vancouver? The median is misleading. Look at the distributions.
> Yes, people are employed without a college degree, and they're working at McDonalds at or near minimum wage. I should have been specific: if you want a good job you need a college degree.
That's hilarious, but in no way representative of the real world. In fact, the tech industry in particular goes out of its way to welcome people without degrees with open arms. You're in the wrong place if you think the tech industry doesn't provide good jobs.
Check out the income distribution of bachelor earning college graduates sometime. They are pretty well evenly represented through every income group, just as they would be without a degree. The exception is those who have post-graduate degrees. They are disproportionately represented amongst the highest earners. But of course they are. Doctors, lawyers, etc. which are traditionally entered through post-graduate schooling implement supply management to artificially limit supply, which artificially increases their incomes.
Of course, that has nothing to do with education, just a manipulation of the market. Since we've been talking about Canada, the dairy industry there does the same thing[1]. There, you have to invest in quota instead of investing in a post-graduate degree to become one of the chosen few, but the economic results are the same.
> Sorry I still don't see how this means that urbanization is the issue.
What part don't you understand? It's just preschool level economics.
> A college degree absolutely leads to higher incomes. This has been studied and is a fact.
If incomes have increased as more and more have college attainment, then there isn't stagnation. Which is it? You can't have it both ways.
> Why are home prices high in Vancouver?
~$500K USD for the median place isn't that high, especially compared to most world-class cities around the world, but Vancouver does have a few things going for it:
1. Low population density. About half that of even San Francisco. The city is growing and people are buying these single occupant homes with the plan of turning them into multi-occupant homes in the future. $1M when you divide it by 100 families down the road is nothing.
2. The climate! The Vancouver region is very unique to Canada, consistently warmer than pretty much anywhere else in the country. Those who wish (or forced) to remain in Canada, but not live out the normally harsh winters are immediately attracted to Vancouver.
3. The geography is breathtaking. Mountains, the ocean, and prime farmland all define the boundaries of the city. Again, there is not much else like it in Canada, especially if you want to reside in a city.
> but it looks like more than 40% of residents in San Francisco are earning $100k +
But realistically, you need about $250K+ to even consider the median home in SF. What percentage of the population does that comprise of? In contrast, about $120K in Vancouver. It would be interesting to see how those numbers compare, not the same income in both cities, because again a home is about half the cost in Vancouver.
> The median is misleading.
It doesn't tell the whole story, for sure. I welcome more comprehensive data. However, it's not misleading to tell the story of the people who live there. Median is simply the number in the middle, so we know that half the population make less, half the population make more. Likewise, we know half of the homes cost more, half cost less.
If you want the people of a given city to be able to afford homes, then the median household realistically has to be able to buy the median home. If we don't care about everyone being able to buy a home, then who cares who is buying them? They could be $100M homes and nothing would change.
It seems I have lost track of your original point here.
What nation? Italy, Spain, UK, Germany, Belgium, Greece, Serbia, France, Russia, Japan, you name it. Because of this worldwide rebuilding effort there was an incredible demand for products, construction, and so forth. US industry and exports boomed as a result.
The greatest generation in the US had it a lot easier than their peers in Europe, but the economics are intertwined. By focusing exclusively on US prosperity you're missing that. The US prospered in large part _because_ of the miserable rebuilding effort in the rest of the world.
WW2 also lasted for 6 years, not 4.
As for your claim that boomers are the worst generation in American history, surely you're not suggesting that they're worse than the slave-holding generations? That position is frankly untenable.
Even so, their war actually ended. The Boomers experimented with extended war in Vietnam from about 1961 to around 1973, as the prototype. Gen X got to grow up with the Cold War, as the test type. Now Millennials get the production-model War on Terror, where the enemy is intentionally faceless, so that they can't spoil anything by surrendering, being defeated, or going bankrupt. The bogeyman is dead; fear now the new bogeyman.
I think perhaps the concept of continual war has been advanced to conceal the fact that we as a civilization don't really need all hands on deck any more. Governments have been inventing busy work for people, desperately hoping that no one notices that an increasing fraction of the necessary labor is being done by robots, and unskilled laborers have become increasingly superfluous. But the Puritanical, Calvinist, Bradfordian cultural undercurrents in the US frown deeply and disapprovingly on idleness, even as those doing the majority of the frowning and tsk-tsk-ing are now "retired".
In the slave-holding generations, the institution of slavery was largely perpetuated by wealthy plantation-owners, as a political minority. Slaves could escape on foot. Nowadays, the student loan debts may not be discharged in bankruptcy, and will follow you to the far ends of the Earth if you run. You generally cannot inhabit a dwelling without steep rent or mortgage debt. You cannot work without making payments into a system that transfers 15% of your earnings to mostly the retired Boomers, through a system that may not even be solvent at the time Gen X starts retiring. Is that worse than slavery? That's a matter of opinion. I think most would say not, but some might say yes sarcastically or as hyperbole in addition to those with a genuine and vehement disdain of Boomers.
Having to pay taxes and being burdened by college debt sucks, but it's not comparable to real actual enslavement. Your excuses why people might make that absurd claim (desire to engine in hyperbole and disdain for the Boomer generation) don't change the fact that slavery is worse.
Your post is also bad history.
Firstly, a full third of households held enslaved people in the south. Not just the rich elites.
Secondly, enslaved people couldn't just run away. Of course some tried but the risk of getting caught was very high and the consequences dire:
> The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 strengthened provisions for the recapture of slaves, and offered them no protection in the justice system. Bounty hunters and civilians could lawfully capture escaped slaves in the North, or any other place, using little more than an affidavit, and return them to the Slave master.
> Many escaped slaves upon return were to face harsh punishments such as amputation of limbs, whippings, branding, and many other horrible acts
Interesting choice of statistics, there. Most of that third of all households kept fewer than 10 slaves, if they even had more than just one. The majority of all slaves were held by a relatively small number of households representing the richest people in the South.
The history of the Underground Railroad and Caribbean slave rebellions shows that it was, in fact, possible for slaves to escape slavery. Smuggling yourself to Canada won't get you away from Experian et al.
But if you had read my post more carefully, you might have noticed that I did say that most people would share the opinion that slavery is worse, and those who did not were probably just doing it for rhetorical effect. It's the same sort of behavior as saying someone is "literally Hitler"--extreme hyperbole.
We're not talking about other countries, the context of the discussion here was clearly about the US, as seen in the reference to Millennial economic troubles which is an issue in the US today.
For the US, the war lasted 4 years, not 6.
No, slave-holding generations weren't worse, because not everyone owned slaves; that was mostly unique to the South. That's like claiming that Millennials suck because they all love 4x4s and mudding and having lots of guns and are big Trump fans. The US fought a nasty war over that issue because most of the population was not part of the slave-holding class, and even the poor white people in the South didn't own slaves either, only the rich ones, though they suckered the poor ones into fighting for their stupid cause.
We were discussing the United States in that context, I thought. Hopefully this was clear as I mentioned 4 years duration (1941-1945 versus 1939-1945) and the resulting economic prosperity which was heavily weighted toward the United States.
>I'd take the financial struggles of the millennial generation over having to fight in WW2 and rebuilding the nation in the aftermath, which is what the Greatest Generation got tasked with.
What in the hell are you talking about (or smoking)? If you're talking about the US, which seems to be the case given your talk of financial struggles and "Millennials", the US won the lottery with WWII. In case you forgot, the US was completely unscathed (except for some bombed ships in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii), and there was no rebuilding to do! Instead, we were the only industrial power left standing, so we made out like bandits by helping everyone else rebuild. Why do you think we became so economically powerful? All the other powers had to buy all their stuff from us! The "Greatest Generation" wasn't "tasked" with much: they put up with 4 years of war (mostly finishing up the job after England and Russia duked it out with Germany, plus dealing with Imperial Japan), and in return they profited handsomely.
If it weren't for WWII (and maybe WWI before it), America would not be a superpower now. We'd be more like Mexico: a good-sized economy, but probably not the most powerful nation on earth both economically and militarily, as Germany and Britain and maybe France would have been too much competition.
I overheard someone last night talking about their father.
At 18, he had to join the Army. He spent the next two years in Europe.
He came home, and went to school on the GI bill.
He then went from job to job--trying to find one that had purpose. He decided to live in a commune. He bought a Indian motorcycle, and took off across the United States. When he need money, he would take odd jobs.(almost impossible today, unless you want to end up like that guy in Alaska who died in a bus.) He liked to drink, and smoke. He got into bar fights.(see how that one lapse of judgement will ruin your life today.) He finally found a job he liked. It was journalism. Within months, he had Union benefits.(again--try to find that today). Within a year, he had a house.(again--blah, blah, blah.) Then a wife, and kids.
I took away two things from that speech.
I couldn't imagine having to go to war at 18.
The other was all the things he did when he got home, and how now---just one mistake could ruin the future of a young person.
I'm not a millennial.
That said, I don't like this economy. I don't like knowing if I make one mistake, I could seriously derail my life. I don't like the fact that we have made so many things, once legal, illegial. Hell, you can't even smoke a cigarette in a park. You can't bum around until you find youself. You're lucky if you have a parent that has a basement you can throw a mattress in.
I really just don't like this current American society.
Would I want to be thrown into a war at 18--no.
That's about all I don't like about the past though.
(I won't be back to debate all the clever counter points. All I know is it's not great today. America has lost a lot. This is not the best country anymore. We need change. I would like to start with rolling back laws. It seems like there's a law against everything? Again, I won't be back, but understand the frustration out there.)
Every generation faces difficult challenges, and the financial issues of the millennial generation are just a matter of national policy. Okay, so some activism is needed to change this. Every generation had to engage in activism to create a more equitable society, why should the millennial generation be the exception? I think the future looks very bright overall, although I can totally see why some millennials see only doom and gloom because of their personal situation.