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Millennials Set To Earn Less Than Generation X (bbc.com)
Reader AmiMoJo writes: Millennials are set to become the first generation to earn less than their predecessors, new research suggests. The Resolution Foundation found that under-35s earned 8,000 pound ($10,600) less in their twenties than Generation X workers. If wages for millennials follow the same path as Generation X, average career earnings will be about 825,000 pound ($1.1m). That would make them the first generation to earn less than their predecessors over the course of their working lives. Research found that some of the pay squeeze was due to under-35s entering the job market as the recession hit, but it also concluded that generational pay progress had ground to a halt even before the financial crisis struck in 2007/8.
The Resolution Foundation found that under-35s earned 8,000 pound ($10,600) less in their twenties than Generation X workers. If wages for millennials follow the same path as Generation X...
It sucks to reach adulthood during a deep recession. Not sure it makes sense to use that as a predictor of the future though.
Hopefully future administrations will realize that an economic boom is always followed by a bust. You aren't helping the country with bubbles like the stock market and housing ones that were set off in the 1990s.
It's time to stop blaming this directly on politics and realize the nature of the economy is evolving, and that past economic patterns are probably dying.
Earning and employment problems are plaguing almost ALL "mature" (industrialized) nations, not just the socialistic or capitalistic nations. Switching to be more socialistic or more capitalistic is not solving it, at least not in terms of wages and job growth.
I believe a combination of automation, and easy access to cheap educated 3rd-world labor via the internet is the main culprit.
We may have to experiment to find solutions rather than keep fighting over doctrine. These experiments include but are not limited to:
1. Tariffs on "lopsided trade" countries to encourage them to normalize their currency and/or allow more local consumption. Dictatorial countries favor employing their population (so they don't riot) and disfavor consumption and/or outside products. We gotta push them harder, or they won't budge. Tariffs are not to start trade wars, but encourage balanced trade. Crank the tariffs up slowly, if they don't comply, to avoid market shocks.
2. Tax the rich to either provide subsistence for those without good jobs, and/or to stimulate the economy by putting more cash in consumer pockets.
3. "Helicopter Money", which is essentially printing more money and giving it to regular folks and/or spending it on infrastructure. Inflation has been lower than expected, suggesting there is enough spare capacity in the global economy to absorb more cash in an orderly fashion. (QE, a cousin of HM, mostly trickled into the rich, not down.)
4. "Make work" programs, such as cleaning up trash, landscaping, day-care, etc. Make-work programs, in part because of inefficient/outmoded office practices, have kept Japan's employment rate high, although arguably have stagnated economic growth: people in Japan can buy less, but at least have jobs. There may be a trade-off between jobs and stuff.
Most conservatives say that "less regulation" is the key. That's doubtful.
States that have tried it, such as Texas and Kansas have had very questionable results. While their unemployment rate has remained relatively strong; wages, infrastructure, medical, pollution, and education have suffered. They get slightly more employment but gut their state in exchange.
They are essentially competing with the 3rd world by becoming more like the 3rd world. I hope that's not our only option.
The problem is that calling something an "experiment" is political suicide. Voters want "decisive" leaders, not tinkerers; it's one reason why Trump has risen: "Mr. Do-it". But sometimes the right solution involves first admitting you have no ready answer.
Table-ized A.I.
No offense, friend, but that is the stupidest goddamn thing I've seen on the Internet in the past half-hour. Lazy thinking like that is how the government gets away with reporting low inflation numbers. The really big ticket items, housing, education, cars, health care have gone up by a factor of ten since the 1980s.
At the same time, the actual starting wages in a Ford plant today is less than it was in 1980.
But at least you'll be able to play Pokemon Go when you're in the bread lines.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Be warned, this is LONG, but it's not a rant, it's a summation. I've tried to edit it down, but I'm my own worst editor, I tend to write (and speak) long. So please bear with me.
OK, here's the deal: Some of you will think this belongs on infowars, or breitbart, or whatever the paranoid-consipiracist right-wingnut site du jour is. Others will think this belongs in motherjones, or huffpost, or whatever the paranoid-conspiracist left wingnut site du jour is. And I'm sure there's people who wrote "WHY IS THIS HERE?!@?!!", I just can't see them since I have no mod points today I'm reading at threshold=1.
Sad truth is both sides are playing us. This story is so whack it could pass for a legit Onion story!
The short of it: This guy Powell -- a Democrat, who served on the boards of 11 big companies wrote a memo in 1971 basically saying Academia was mounting an attack on Free Enterprise. This memo was sent to his buddy, the Director of the US Chamber of Commerce, Eugene Sydnor. Then Powell gets put in the Supreme Court by Nixon.
The result of the memo - which was kept secret from The People for a while - was the rise of Neo-Liberalism, that is, de-regulation, free-trade, and turning our economy from a production economy to a "services" economy - which really means "Financial" economy. Yeah. Banks rule us, and they crashed mightily in 2007-2008, and are still trying to put the pieces back together.
So this Powell memo becomes one of the factors that created the corporate culture we have today. Republicans and Conservatives get the blame, when the idea and first motions were from a Liberal Democrat.
Essentially, the result was the manipulation of media and Academia - through grants, through favors, through good old-fashioned cocksuckery - to shift the thinking of the People to thinking that Free Enterprise was a good thing, that Government shouldn't meddle with business (de-regulation). A number of think-tanks were established, that were pro-business and anti-socialist.
At the same time while all those pieces were put together, Nixon un-hitched the dollar from the gold standard, the 1973 and 1979 energy crisis happened, the economy tanked, and the rest of the 20th century was spent in a downard slope.
This neo-liberal foundation helped shape the Reagan economic policies, the whole trickle-down thing, the reduction of corporate taxes, etc.
By the 90's it looked like the slope had stopped, but in the early 00's it fell off a cliff and it's still doing so.
So yes, people - we got robbed by liberals, democrats, conservatives and republicans combined. But somehow the blame has been shifted to the conservatives, as if it is their fault for breaking the US.
Sources? Citations? Do your own reading. Start with the Powell Memo itself, then some Chomsky, and your own examination of the event past half century. Find out what think-tanks were created and what the spout. Find out what rules were taken out to let business "flourish." This is all out there, in the open, from sites and books that are both conservative and liberal. This is not a one-sided thing, folks.
It'll turn your stomach, it will, doing that kind of reading.
We got played, by both sides, but the foundation was a liberal foundation, upon which most of the economic policies of today were built on.
I don't believe any of these people. Not a one. Especially not Billary, and especially not Trump.
What do we do? Suffer quietly, England-style? Revolution? We're trapped, folks. And what happened here spread to other countries, so emigration to say, England, is not an option, things over there and in Europe are also whacked.
I think we're going to have to let this take its course. Let it burn, stand back and just let it burn. People already are hurting. People already have lost jobs and are having no luck in getting something like what they lost. And we're going to have to let it burn, and once it's all ashes, we'll build it again. But
The "Civilized World" jumped the shark ca. 1973.
SS was never meant to be a savings plan, more like a pyramid scheme where you collected something from everyone working and divvied it up among those that weren't. Which worked well as long as each generation did better than the last. The problem was that the baby boomers were a bubble in the pipeline and the prediction was that those of us working when they retired would get screwed. The Regan fix would have actually fixed it, if congress could have actually balanced the budget between ~85-15 rather than just deficit spending more than the trust fund took in. So taken at a face value the fact that the government continues to spend more than it takes in has little to do with SS, which is a separate tax with a separate funding model.
Again by itself, SS is fine, the trust fund is ok too from the perspective of it having a lot of spare cash, and with just minor tweaks (removal of the SS wage cap for starters) fixes it for another generation or two. Not paying people with a net worth > $1 million is another tweak, things that are all fairly pedestrian but for some reason can't get any traction in congress. I leave you to reason about that....
Wrong on so many levels.
Perhaps you should read and study the economic history of the US since the 1970s to gain a better perspective on the realities, as opposed to using your half baked assertions.
It has been shown over and over again that since the collapse of unions, the off shoring of manufacturing, globalization, increasing automation, etc that those who used to be in the American Middle Class have had a harder and harder time staying there since the 1970s.
This has nothing to do with organic artisan tacos or PBRs or any other "look at me being the snarky/witty guy!" bullshit you care to throw out there.
As I said, please try to read and understand what has happened in the last 30 years to the American Middle Class.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range