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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.
That's ok...as long as everyone gets a trophy for trying....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
The generation after the long IT boom inaugurated in the early 1980s and finishing off in about 2001 is going to earn less than their predecessors. Color me unsurprised. We squandered the fruits of that on peak socialism. Now the long slide since 2008 will continue until some disruptive element creates economic opportunity. I'm not exactly holding my breath.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
But what really matters is standard of living. Sure, they might make less money, but in the 1980s a cell phone cost thousands and barely worked, compared to what you can get for a few hundred bucks and $30 a month. Earning less money != worse life.
...America is in slow economic decline.
Most kids today have few if any marketable skills and are in piss poor physical shape and are unable to keep up with a demanding work environment.
Sad but true... the current generation is fucking worthless.
I was just thinking that. The entitlement generation getting LESS than anyone else! That's unpossible! Create YouTube videos! Flood Reddit with Hashtags! #Millennialincomesmatter
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
There is plenty of money to be made if young people would stop squandering their youth.
Generation X had to learn how to make the things that the current generation just consumes today.
Having a computer in the early 90's or late 80's meant you had parents who cared about technology and spent a huge portion of their income to get it.
Despite the amazingly cheap and plentiful access to technology today to learn anything for almost nothing, the current generation spends the majority of their time watching YouTube and Netflix.
And they wonder why their income is low.
Gen X isn't dead yet. If you'd rather watch YouTube and be useless, we'll happily make buckets of money that you could be making as well.
Work Safe Porn
IMHO, these are the big issues causing this"
1) The wealth gap today is close to what it was in the "Roaring Twenties". /rant
2) College is in a bubble due to government subsidies; raising the cost of college for everyone
3) Entire industries are no longer being created like they used to (Railroad, Oil, Automobiles, Planes, Computers, etc...)
4) Technical innovation is just "Uber-izing" everything. Jobs that can be automated, will be. Companies of the future will just be a CEO and a CTO. Everyone else not creating or automating things will earn less and less income.
5) Globalization is feeding the wealth gap more so than ever before. The wealthy ruling class are turning governments into corporate oligarchies.
6) The career ladder is more about where you were born that what you can do. Meritocracy, to a large extent, is becoming more and more of a myth. If you were born in a rich neighborhood and go to a private school.
When I grew up in the 80's I seem to recall hearing numerous times that we would be the first generation in history to do worse off than our parents. Perhaps due to gas prices hitting astronomical levels by now.
The money has been squandered on a perpetual war that began in 2001. As of 2013, the combined costs of the US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were estimated at $4 trillion. That money equally divided amongst all Americans amounts to roughly $1000 / person / year.
You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it dissolve.
That "reform" you and your parents pulled off of Social Security in the mid-80s was a nice trick. Create a "trust fund" and then spend the trust fund on regular expenses, making sure future generations get to pay for your day-to-day. Also, thanks for all of the free trade deals that don't take into account the warping of the free market due to the inability of labor to freely move around. You even have "free market" people believing that free trade == free market. I bought it hook, line, and sinker in my teens and 20s. Nice job.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Cause and effect: they only sound entitled to assholes like you because they're actually getting screwed and complaining about it! Jeez, it's like Oliver fucking Twist around here!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Make no mistake, this didn't start with the Millennials. We started firmly down this path in the 1930s; WWII saved our grandparents, the cold war saved our parents, and the advent of the "Computer Age" saved Gen-X.
Unless the Millennials can pull a similar rabbit out of their hats, should it really surprise us that FDR's pyramid schemes (yes, plural) have finally run out of new suckers and can only head one way from here?
We not only earning less, we are being taxed up to two times more
This is the exact reason Brexit happened and why Trump will probably win. Living-wage jobs have been methodically destroyed on both sides of the pond by the greed-pig class. The result has been both the Oxbridge toffs and the Koch Brothers have completely lost control of the rabble they so easily roused over the last decade, paving the way for unhinged pricks like Farage and Trump.
It sure is. Nearly 1 billion people have been taken out of extreme poverty in 20 years. Or do you hate foreigners and support extreme poverty? Maybe we should keep them poor and send aid, it's another option.
captcha: disrupts
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.
I imagine there was a time when the word gifted was used to describe only children who were above average,
the term gifted is now applied to any student with more brain wave activity than a glazed doughnut.
Those two data points appear to be converging at an ever increasing rate.
All those jobs will be automated.
The real minimum wage is $0.
But why are you getting less? Too many Grievance Studies majors? Companies seeking skilled labor, from developers to the skilled trades, are still see labor shortages, so why the disparity? Too few skilled workers? Too much immigration?
The UK in particular had a huge wave of immigration, which may have destroyed the ability to make a living wage from unskilled labor, and put a lot of pressure on semi-skilled workers. Is that the problem?
Or maybe we have a generation that never learned to stick it out through adversity to get to the goal? Maybe. Point is, everyone thinks they're getting screwed, but only losers rest behind "the man is keeping me down, and there's nothing I can do".
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
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.
The economy has been growing quite steadily over this period, including since 2008. If that new wealth was divided up among American workers in the same way it was in the 1980s, then millennials would be better of than previous generations.
So the problem is not that we need a disruptive source of economic opportunity, it is that the existing disruptive sources of economic opportunity are generating wealth that is simply accumulating among current holders of wealth, to the exclusion of new workers.
Incidentally, such an in-equal wealth distribution could not - by definition - occur if the USA was the socialist country you seem to think it is.
But why are you getting less? Too many Grievance Studies majors? Companies seeking skilled labor, from developers to the skilled trades, are still see labor shortages, so why the disparity? Too few skilled workers? Too much immigration?
Another term for 'labor shortage' is 'salary increase', and nobody's seeing that happen.
Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
Or its because rather than working hard to EARN more than the last generation they are busy complaining about it. I am a millennial and and currently making more than my very successful parents were making when they were my age. But I worked my ass off to be where I am and have never complained about that work. My "friends" went to college but then screwed around at work and had no drive to do better. They don't work long hours to get ahead and they are stuck in the same spot 5 years later. Then they complain and think that if only we taxed the "rich" more and redistributed it then everything would be better. Some are public servants and think they are worth "more". I have to remind them that they make well over the poverty line and that they are the taxpayers - (it won't be redistributed to them).
I started with long shitty hours (but nothing compared to my parents). I have the same / similar degrees as both my parents (MBA), from the same state university. Yet somehow I have managed to do better than them and work less hours, as a millennial. I know this doesn't fit the narrative. Probably because people like me don't bother to get up and talk to the media to complain about how well we are doing.
Even making this post is an insane waste of my time other than I feel the narrative needs to be corrected. We are doing just fine. We just want the same exact things our parents had. The things they spent 30+ years earning. And we want them the day we walk out their door.
I see a lot of "grumpy old man" posts (I'm 40 for context...) on this subject blaming entitlement and other reasons for this. I don't see it that way...I haven't run into any of the stereotypical Millennials with a capital M that the media describes -- remember, Generation X were supposed to be "slackers" in the 90s also. So, I don't think it's the people. I think it's the work environment. Work is very different from the golden age of the 50s through the 70s in the US...
- After WW II, a family could live comfortably on a single income, and there was a reasonably good chance someone could keep their job for life and/or be promoted from within and gain success that way. And this is any family -- from the janitor to the CEO (relatively speaking of course.)
- After the great corporate downsizing wave of the 90s, it was still possible to graduate from any college, with any degree in any field, and still find entry-level work. While it was less possible to do the single-income thing and required lots of sacrifice to do so, the opportunity existed.
- Now, entry level tech jobs don't exist or are done offshore or by H-1B labor. The economy has fully adjusted to two-earner families, so it's basically impossible to be a single-earner family unless you live in a really cheap part of the country (where, consequently, there are no jobs anymore.)
So, don't blame the Millennials. They're in a tough spot. I was very lucky in my early career to be able to work my way up from an entry-level support job to where I am now...that opportunity is much harder to come by now.
There are many statistics about the Millennials being less likely to go to college. I think that's a contributing factor. Gen-X is probably the most educated generation.....this would be reflected in their salaries, too.
Or, you could buy two and have a pair of Tatas.
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.
but that at least looked like work.
Time to offend someone
What we have, despite you feeling entitled and being the special snowflake and superior to everyone coming after you (typical for people of the current generation), is for the first time, the next generation (which will also think that the generation after her will be lazy, whiney, overconfident and not knowing what hard work is) will be earning less than you.
Oh, and by "we", I mean "baby boomers". I'm gen X and wasn't old enough to vote when all this shit really started in the 80s.
I'm a boomer - but I voted against pretty much all of this stuff. And campaigned against it, too. Virtually nobody I ever voted for was elected.
As for the political institutions: The generations before ours held onto power until quite recently (and have bequeathed it to individuals who are their ideological colleagues among later generations). Their crooked lock on the voting process has kept them in power. Look at the ages of the congresscritters and presidents. Even Bill Clinton was a pre-boomer - conceived DURING WWII, and growing up in a cohort where children were scarce and pampered, rather than a flood to be "channelled" into government-approved career paths (by threat of the draft during the Vietnam adventure).
Don't fall for the "blame the boomers" line: It's another instance of the power elite playing divide-and-conquer, to cut you off from potential allies.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
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....
Worth mentioning that the economy should be looked at as a global whole, not one country in isolation.....the global reduction in poverty and inequality has been dramatic. It's true that some industries in the US and England have suffered (textiles, for example), but overall the world has benefited tremendously.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
The issue I described is not unique to millennials but is true across society in general. It's not that millenial salaries aren't increasing, it's that salaries in general are not increasing.
That being said, I'm doing well for myself, making more than the median income. I'm not really motivated to earn more because that would only worsen income inequality, which I'm opposed to.
Also, generation X did none of the things you suggest. Instead, they financed their generation on debt, which subsequent generations will now be paying off. The hypocrisy is strong here.
Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
Another term for 'labor shortage' is 'salary increase', and nobody's seeing that happen.
Obviously false, as salaries are going up in some fields.
But we're looking at an average across a large population. Are fewer people going into fields that pay well? Is there less need for highly skilled workers? Are low-paying jobs paying less, and that's dominating? (I think that's true.)
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
I doubt most baby boomers paid as much for tecom services per month as your average cell phone/home internet connection costs.
IIRC when I was younger my parents were paying something like $10 a month for phone service that's $30 in today dollars (assume 1980 for CPI calculation).
Today a family can easily spend north of $200 a month providing a cell phone + home internet. Skimping it might be possible to get that for less, but i'm betting most families spend more than $30 a month in telcom services. Sure they are getting more service, but having internet access is even more critical today than having a phone was in 1970...
Sure, let's take a look at how "fine" salaries are today. Here's some numbers.
So, over the last 47 years, we've got a whopping 21% growth in the median salary. That's a roughly 0.4% annual growth rate, on average. That's all we've gotten from widespread automation, swapping out typists for software engineers, etc.
If these remarkable advancements in technology are only giving us 0.4% annual growth in salaries, is it even worth it? Society sure seems to get more than 0.4% more complicated every year. Work seems to get a lot more than 0.4% demanding every year.
Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
Here's a few:
1. Education is more expensive, and yet easier to get a loan for plunging young people into deep debt.
2. Job opportunities for all these graduates aren't there.
3. Healthcare is far more expensive than it used to be.
It's not that I hate people being brought out of extreme poverty.. it's just that I don't understand why it has to be all on my back instead of the back of whatever government they live under.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
I'm a 34 year old political refugee from Poland, but I suppose being opposed to income inequality and actually choosing my actions to be consistent with my stated beliefs makes me a millennial SJW? Could you please explain how that works?
Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
I doubt most baby boomers paid as much for tecom services per month as your average cell phone/home internet connection costs.
Maybe, but I doubt that it's really that far off. And for the difference, you're getting much, much more capability.
That "something like $10 a month" you think your boomer parents were paying was probably just the unlimited local calling portion of the phone bill, before taxes, fees, maintenance charges, extended area service charges, touch-tone charges, and all the other miscellaneous things the phone companies used to charge for. I'm pretty confident in saying this, because I'm a boomer and I remember what I used to pay. In 1986, the national average for a private, single-line touch-tone service was $49.25 per month. $49.25 in 1986 dollars would have been $107.77 in 2015.
I regret my past post in this thread because it is inadvertently offtopic. However, I have seen no evidence that salary growth has been strong in any particular skilled trade. One might argue that some automated-away trades are replaced with new skilled trades, and that this results in an overall larger number of skilled workers and a corresponding increase in income, or that the newly-created skilled labor positions pay better than the previous median skilled labor positions did, thereby driving up the skilled labor median... but that any given skilled worker has seen plenty of salary growth? Not relative to overall market growth, no.
Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
I think the main problem is that people are going into jobs that there isn't any actual demand for. For example, I've actually met somebody who majored in History and then complains that he can't make a living wage. And I've seen many more art majors who think that the world is going to hell because not enough people care for the moronic crap art that most local art districts produce.
The same is true for some majors that actually paid a lot in the past, and otherwise may still pay a high hourly rate, but there are so fucking many people in that career that your odds of finding steady work are crap. Case in point, lawyers.
Meanwhile there are lots of jobs that pay no less than $20/hr that can't be automated and have plenty of positions that need filling: HVAC, plumbing, auto and aviation mechanics (good mechanics can easily pull a 6 figure sum, by the way) construction workers, electricians, landscapers, maintenance contractors, and many more.
I personally went to community college to become a network engineer, and I didn't borrow a cent for school either.
think the main problem is that people are going into jobs that there isn't any actual demand for.
Partially because demand for human labor relative to overall market size is decreasing. Some call this "increasing productivity".
For example, I've actually met somebody who majored in History and then complains that he can't make a living wage. And I've seen many more art majors who think that the world is going to hell because not enough people care for the moronic crap art that most local art districts produce.
I both agree and disagree. I studied math, EE, CoE, and CS. Not because I'm pragmatic, but because I've been a science/technology nerd since I was little. My fiancee did philosophy for her undergrad, something even less pragmatic for her masters. Today, she makes as much as me (working in a field totally unrelated to any of her education), despite being 5 years my junior.
The same is true for some majors that actually paid a lot in the past, and otherwise may still pay a high hourly rate, but there are so fucking many people in that career that your odds of finding steady work are crap. Case in point, lawyers.
Excellent example. Can't really argue against this.
Meanwhile there are lots of jobs that pay no less than $20/hr that can't be automated and have plenty of positions that need filling: HVAC, plumbing, auto and aviation mechanics (good mechanics can easily pull a 6 figure sum, by the way) construction workers, electricians, landscapers, maintenance contractors, and many more.
Going from lawyers to mechanics isn't exactly a huge leap forward. That's the point, that there is no labor shortage, not in the labor market overall. There is a shortage of demand. Some fields are doing okay, like the blue collar trades that you mentioned, largely due to the fact that they're both harder to automate and relatively immune to globalization-related concerns, which helps keep demand high. Other fields, not so much, because if there was, you'd easily be able to point to evidence and say "See, they really can't find people to do $job! They're offering ludicrously high salaries and still these positions go unfilled!", much like you just pointed to those trades, which account for only a tiny share of the labor market, and as such are more the exception than the norm.
Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
I think I can explain that.
Selfishness and greed are, in their eyes, the only "rational" attitudes. You need to put your own needs first if you want to win the evolution game.
They see concepts like 'integrity' and 'concern for others' as irrational. They believe that no rational person would put others ahead of themselves. They believe that those nasty selfless actions can only bring about the end of humanity as it unnaturally allows the weak to survive and prosper, when they should suffer and die to make way for those better fit. Though they sometimes believe that if the lesser are of any use, they could be allowed the minimum needed to survive, but should not be allowed to reproduce.
The only groups of which they're aware that dare to promote those detestable values are Millennials and SJW's. They think Millennials qualify because kids these days are nothing but a bunch of lazy and entitled leaches on society. (Not unlike how previous generations viewed Gen-X'ers and Boomers.) They've already forgotten what SJW means, but they're pretty sure it's a bad thing. All the same, the important thing is they think those groups want to promote equality as it's in their best interests as they're nothing but a bunch of lazy bottom-feeders.
Can you think of anything more disgusting to people like the parent poster than equality? Their worldview demands that there are strong and weak, fit and unfit, winners and losers. (You can talk about advantages and disadvantages outside an individuals control, but they deny those are significant factors in an individual person's success. Oh, in case you didn't know, success is defined entirely in terms of income and/or accumulated wealth.)
As only Millennials and SJW's would dare to suggest that disturbing things like 'equality' and 'integrity' are actually positive attributes, you must be among them.
Required reading for internet skeptics
Whilst it is true that WESTERN millennials are getting paid less than than parents generation, across the whole world, the opposite is the case. The raising of hundreds of millions from poverty in Asia and to a lesser extent Africa and Latin America means that the truth is far more complex. And this helps reveal the problem; given that increased competition from these areas exists, it is not a surprise if workers who are, in effect, in competition with these masses get to be paid less.
Which doesn't mean that our own people don't have a problem, but any explanation which focuses on it as an unalloyed BAD THING is defective. Yet that is the message that is being presented by Trump and echoed to a lesser extent by Hilary. The result could be nasty.
you missed 'Does upper management keeps more for the shareholders
Total earnings of all publicly held corporations in the US are roughly 7% of total salaries in the US, so they're keeping roughly 15% for shareholders. That hasn't changed much in the past 30 years. Harder to say for small businesses, but then it's harder to separate labor form capital there.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
They don't have to pay for long distance calls.
that'll make up for not being able to afford a house ever.
They can email, text, tweet, or communicate with people all over the world. They can share your opinion instantly with many people at the same time.
Great, so they can blog/tweet/swipe right about not being able to afford a house.
THe Nintendo of 1985 sucked compared to the current Xbox One.
that will give them something to do while they're stuck at home with their parents due to being unable to afford a house ever.
You can rent or watch nearly any movie at home you like instantly online (don't have to rent a VHS tape).
See previous point.
You have access for FREE to everything you need to master any subject, including all the coursework to get degrees for top universities like MIT and Stanford.
No you can't and a first degree is not enought to master a subject.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
plus automation. That really is all there is to it. The Baby boomers had the advantage of the cold war keeping factories from moving overseas. I can't compete with Cancer Villages and people who lack food security. When I try my wages go down. Who know?
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The assumption wasn't that each generation would do better, it was that each generation would be larger--it's very much a Ponzi scheme, and it was set up originally with its payout age being past the average person's life expectancy. At this point? Aside from the fact that life expediencies are better, on the whole all the first world countries have been seeing birthrates below replacement rate for a significant period of time now, and this is actually a pretty reliable demographic trend around the world as the birthrate tends to drop with improvements in access to education for women. (This doesn't actually necessarily link to 'women are choosing not to have babies'--said education does not necessarily include the information for family planning, unless you're using that as a euphemism for 'planning not to have one.' Fixing that would make it easier to distinguish 'chose not to' from 'wanted to but missed the boat.')
As for the rest? Seriously, I wouldn't trust politicians with money laying around. What happened to that 'trust fund' is precisely what I'd expect them to do with any money they saw lying around not being spent on programs that will buy them votes. Campaign finance reform won't actually stop politicians from coming up with clever schemes to spend other people's money to help them stay in power.
It was true in the past that a college degree was the gateway to a well paying white collar job. But that was only true because not everybody was getting a college degree. There are fundamental supply and demand forces working against this generation of graduates.
There's nothing "natural" about inflation. Inflation is always the product of a government that spends more than it takes in through taxes. When you have a fixed money supply you will have deflation, which is one of the reasons people justify fiat currencies.
That's a microaggression against my degree in environmental science.
I would say they are approximately snowflake size.