Millennials Set To Earn Less Than Generation X (bbc.com) 614
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.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I'm totally shocked... (Score:5, Insightful)
So with lower taxes we squandered it on socialism? Could it be that this is just an effect of capitalism? driving down costs == driving down wages.
Re:I'm totally shocked... (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, yeah, you can both be right. Taxes went down, but spending didn't. And of course WHAT we spend on matters, and we spend a lot more of our GDP on social programs than we used to.
Re:I'm totally shocked... (Score:5, Insightful)
We squandered the fruits of that on peak socialism.
I think you meant to write peak corporate welfare, because at least in US social nets were/are being cut at least since Reagan era, if not earlier.
Re:I'm totally shocked... (Score:4, Insightful)
We squandered the fruits of that on peak socialism.
I think you meant to write peak corporate welfare, because at least in US social nets were/are being cut at least since Reagan era, if not earlier.
Multiple sources, like the US government, report that > 1/3 households are on means tested assistance (e.g. welfare). If you add unemployment, social security and other government pensions, you are at or near 50%. Is that more, or less, than when Reagan cut welfare? Or, was that (Bill) Clinton that that reformed welfare?
Re:I'm totally shocked... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a joke that someone can put 40 hours in per week with one employer and still need to work a 2nd job or require government assistance simply to pay the bills and put food on the table.
Re:I'm totally shocked... (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly. And this sub-livable minimum wage amounts to a massive, unorganized corporate welfare scheme, paid by the family, friends, and government programs that subsidize the workers making sub-livable wages.
Re:I'm totally shocked... (Score:5, Informative)
If minimum wage kept up with inflation, maybe we wouldn't have so many people on welfare.
Except for the people who will be earning $0, which is the minimum wage you get when you can't get a job.
It's a joke that someone can put 40 hours in per week with one employer and still need to work a 2nd job or require government assistance simply to pay the bills and put food on the table.
Minimum wage increases are usually met with price increases as well, meaning that the gains seen by minimum wage earners is minimal. However, the people earning more than minimum wage are actually hurt.
Consider this scenario. Suppose you've been working a job for 5 years and you started out at minimum wage, $7.25. Now you're making $15 an hour due to annual increases from good performance reviews. That's a 107% increase over that time. Suddenly, the minimum wage is raised to $15 an hour. What's the likely outcome? You know you're not going to be getting a 107% increase again to $31.03. More likely, you'll get a $3-$5 raise, meaning that after 5 years of hard work, you're going to be making about 20% to 33.3% more than a person who was just hired. In addition to that, most thing you'd like to buy are now going to cost more.
Essentially, a minimum wage increase is a wage decrease for everyone else. It doesn't hurt the rich, who will barely notice the increase, but it especially hurts the working lower & middle-lower class people who were making slightly more than minimum wage, which is a lot more than those who earn just the minimum wage.
The one exception to this union employees, since their contracts are usually tied to minimum wage. They're always in favor of minimum wage increases because they'll get the full proportional raise, making them slightly better off than before, because everyone else is being dragged down.
Re:I'm totally shocked... (Score:5, Informative)
Minimum wage increases don't usually cause price increases. Prices are usually mostly unrelated to labour costs, being set by what the market will stand. The lower the margin the more mass production the item, generally speaking, so the less connected to wages the cost is.
Re:I'm totally shocked... (Score:5, Insightful)
Ding ding ding!
The money didn't disappear, the world's wealthiest people are simply hoarding it. In the '50s and '60s when sci-fi writers predicted that we'd be working 2 days a week by now and have a better standard of living to boot, that math had only one minor mistake - it assumed that wealth inequality wouldn't massively increase, funneling all that wealth into a new class of hyper-royalty.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
No one is sitting on a big pile of cash except drug dealers. Where do you get these ideas?
Re: (Score:3)
Ah, so you're not talking about "the wealthy", you're talking about corporations. Those corporation would spend that money immediately if they saw a way to get a return on it exceeding taxes. Couple of ways you could fix that, but I'd like to see tax-preferential treatment of dividends, to encourage companies to return profits to stockholders (the way things worked until to 70s or so). Also, we need to end the massive tax barrier to bringing overseas cash back to the US.
Re: (Score:3)
Also, we need to close the loopholes that let companies hide earnings overseas instead of making it easier for them to profit from these arrangements.
Easy to say, unlikely to happen. Anyhow, we want the corporation to spen dthat money more than we want to tax that money, so there's an easy fix there.
Hmm, maybe instead of taxing corporate earnings, we could move to some form of taxing profits only when the cash is hoarded, giving a strong incentive to spend it or return it to stockholders (which gets it taxed).
Re: (Score:3)
Re:I'm totally shocked... (Score:4, Interesting)
How is corporate welfare not socialism?
Socialism doesn't mean "for the little guy." It means "the means of production owned or controlled by the state."
Corporate welfare qualifies.
Actually socialism means "the means of production owned or controlled by the people". This can be the State, it can be through co-ops, credit unions etc. Ideally is getting rid of government though it is hard as the Stalinists usually show up and fuck things.
Ideally socialism needs to be combined with libertarianism.
http://webcache.googleusercont... [googleusercontent.com]
http://www.spookmagazine.com/w... [spookmagazine.com]
http://archive.is/SvI7U [archive.is]
Re:I'm totally shocked... (Score:5, Informative)
The only social nets I can spot currently are keeping banks and other "important" entities propped up. Can't identify any normal people in there.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The only social nets I can spot currently are keeping banks and other "important" entities propped up. Can't identify any normal people in there.
I'm pretty sure it's not the banks who are signed up for Obamacare. Or GW Bush's prescription drug benefit expansion. Companies pay into Social Security, Medicare and unemployment insurance, not receive money from them.
I know it's cool and hip to say that the US government helps nobody except banks or something - usually not a charge leveled at Democratic administrations, but whatever - but it's not true and contributes nothing positive to the discussion. In the 2015 US Federal budget including discretionar [politifact.com]
Squandered (Score:3)
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 [washingtonpost.com]. That money equally divided amongst all Americans amounts to roughly $1000 / person / year.
Re:I'm totally shocked... (Score:5, Insightful)
Nah, we screwed the millennials by changing to an economy built on debt and by turning stuff people need into unaffordable assets, e.g. houses. Any social benefits were removed, like free university education.
It's anti-socialism. Socialism would never have allowed the end of building social housing or needing two incomes to raise a family.
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... (Score:3)
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 proc
Re:I'm totally shocked... (Score:5, Informative)
The social programs have been raised to the maximum sustainable level - really, they couldn't be any higher without creating a positive feedback loop, eliminating more of the private sector in favor of benefits, as some argue already has happened to some extent.
That's funny, because around here we have much more extensive and well-funded social programs. Oddly enough, no such positive feedback loop has happened. Rather the opposite, in fact.
But aggregate wealth is growing... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:I'm totally shocked... (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.socialistworld.net/doc/3752 [socialistworld.net]
"Sweden has always been a solid market economy", states the present right-wing government on its website. And that is certainly true. Sweden has never been a socialist society - based on public ownership of production, workers’ control and management, social equality and a democratic plan of production. Neither has Sweden been a ‘mixed economy’ or provided a ‘third way’ - an alternative to both capitalism and socialism, if such a thing were possible.
Standard of living (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Standard of living (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Sure, we can buy electronics cheaply, but cost of housing, education, transportation are all significantly up at the same time as wages and unemployment are down.
Re:Standard of living (Score:4, Interesting)
Housing is up, education is up, not so sure on transportation. I suspect that is regionally up in some places down in others.
The smog has been cut way back, ozone is coming back, acid rain is gone. Those were worthwhile trades for higher transportation costs I think.
Re: (Score:3)
Education used to be free here, not it involves a mountain of debt. The environment is recovering in some ways but climate change is still looking near irreversible, and we are now paying for the boomer's cheap energy that they enjoyed.
Re:Standard of living (Score:5, Insightful)
In the 1970's a kid straight out of high school could get a job, get married, buy a 3 bed house + garage + car in the suburbs and raise 2.6 children on one paycheck.
Today's third level graduates look forward to a half decade of half-jobs, effective vagrancy, crippling rents, and the growing impossibility of being able to afford even an apartment + car on two salaries.
Cheap smartphones with social media apps do not health or wealth create.
Less wealth == less life.
Millennials could earn twice what they do now and they'd still be less wealthy than their parents because globalisation has left the vast majority of them behind.
The only numbers that really matter are the big ticket items. Phones are not those.
Re:Standard of living (Score:5, Insightful)
In the 1970's a kid straight out of high school could get a job, get married, buy a 3 bed house + garage + car in the suburbs and raise 2.6 children on one paycheck.
Today's third level graduates look forward to a half decade of half-jobs, effective vagrancy, crippling rents, and the growing impossibility of being able to afford even an apartment + car on two salaries.
Compare the lifestyles though. The kid in the 1970's generally didn't care where he lived as long as he got that house (which BTW, was likely MUCH smaller than the average house of today - SQFT per occupant has gone up dramatically in the last ~30 years). Now people just have to live where it's "happening". Nobody wants to live in Boise - it's gotta be the bay area, or Austin, or New York.
And how many of those "third level graduates" were for liberal arts degrees where you're really only equipped to teach what you studied in when you graduate, while 1970's kid in high school took up vocational classes in auto mechanics or HVAC - less glamorous or prestigious but ACTUAL USEFUL SKILLS. Those skills also translate well into being able to do a lot of your own home, auto, or other "around the house" type maintenance saving from having to call a repairman out every time you find a frayed cord. 30 years ago pretty much everyone was decently handy and knew how to fix basic stuff.
And as stated - 1970's kid is doing all this on one salary. His wife/partner/other half is likely at home cooking all of their meals, rather than going downtown for organic artisan tacos and PBR's every night. When you're cooking your food at home you can afford to feed 5-6 people easily for what it would cost for one person to eat out. Now I'm not suggesting that women shouldn't be in the workforce at all (on the contrary I think its better how it is now), but it is a foolish notion to compare two time periods and say that now you NEED two incomes. You don't need it - it's just that now one partner who was once doing very real work to reduce the overhead needed to raise a family is now trading their time for extra income instead.
Honestly, I don't get the mindset of comparing our supposedly rosy past to the present and then suggesting a huge turn towards Socialism as how we return to that. That certainly wasn't the system we had in place back then to get that result.
Re:Standard of living (Score:5, Insightful)
Nice try, but no. Living in the trendy areas is even more out of reach for that high school kid. So much so that places in Ca are having trouble hiring police, firefighters, and teachers because they simply can't afford to live there, even on 2 paychecks.
That small house in Boise is out of reach for a single income even if the kid went in to HVAC or auto mechanics and the wife stays home and cooks.
Re:Standard of living (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
My high school had no auto shop, and does any school have an HVAC class...I seriously asking was that really ever a thing?
Yes. I graduated in 1999 and even then my high school had vocational classes available to train to be an auto-mechanic, carpenter, electrician, or HVAC tech. And those jobs pay pretty well. My brother actually went the more vocational route (I went to college, though I did major in a STEM field) and he's making within 5% of my salary with only a high school diploma.
Sadly though those programs have been discontinued. It's no longer considered "respectable" to work with your hands - even if it's a well p
Re: (Score:3)
"The rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer." Now, is that trend likely to continue with Clinton? If not, how is she going to change it?
She's not going to change it, just like Trump wouldn't.
Why ask that question?
Many of the forces at play disrupting "The American Dream" have more to do with globalization and technology than anything else.
No Wall, no Tariff, no Tax Cut, no Free College will change any of that.
The changes we see now are like a tsunami.
You can try to ride it out, or get to higher ground, if you can.
Re: (Score:3)
I'm not voting for Trump, but I doubt it would be any better with Clinton. Just ask yourself this: Has wealth distribution in the U.S. gotten better or worse during Obama's 8 years. Most people would say "The rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer." Now, is that trend likely to continue with Clinton? If not, how is she going to change it?
The Clintons will get richer. That is for sure.
Re:Standard of living (Score:5, Insightful)
A better metric would be rent/mortgage and other unavoidable costs as a proportion of income. They have all being going up. The boomers burnt all the cheap energy and broke the climate, and then bought up all the housing to use as assets while simultaneously objecting to any new stock being built.
Millennials are actually paying for their retirements twice, once through taxes (pensions) and again through rent. And maybe an unpaid internship on the side, with a mountain of student debt on top.
Actually, debt levels are another good indicator of quality of life. People with a lot of debt tend not to live such good lives.
Re:Standard of living (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Because... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Because... (Score:4, Insightful)
Bullshit! Why do I keep hearing that "America is in a slow economic decline, America is in a slow economic decline...", everyone parrots it and when asked to support that claim with at least a HINT of facts, nobody can back it up.
There is nothing slow about it, really.
And they're still OVERPAID! (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:And they're still OVERPAID! (Score:5, Funny)
What? You mean that degree in gender studies and female studies is worthless? How can you say that? That only means more companies sorely need a Chief Diversity Officer and a Diversity Department!!!1111
#bullshitdegreesmatter
Re:And they're still OVERPAID! (Score:5, Insightful)
Just think: all those people with worthless degrees probably would have gone straight to work after high school or learned a trade, if it weren't for dumbass Boomer and Gen-X parents and guidance counselors blatantly lying to them about how "necessary" a college degree (any college degree) was!
Re:And they're still OVERPAID! (Score:5, Insightful)
Just think: all those people with worthless degrees probably would have gone straight to work after high school or learned a trade
Unless you're going to be a plumber, there aren't many of those jobs left. The US has exported most of its low-skill manufacturing, and the low-skill construction and agricultural and custodial jobs tend to go to illegal immigrants because permanent residents want a higher salary. Go figure.
There is no smoking gun. It's an arsenal. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Not so fast, there... (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
Re:Not so fast, there... (Score:4, Interesting)
A few possible rabbits (mostly bad):
1) WWIII (which would have to stay conventional and our side would have to win - though casualties would be in the hundreds of millions around the world).
2) US government bankruptcy (this destroys the fiat dollar and a generation's savings, but the gov't can no longer can run up debt that squeezes discretionary spending.)
3) A second "black plague" that culls the herd around the globe and humble everyone enough so they'd be more willing to help each other out and cut people's dependence on less efficient, government-sponsored socialism.)
4) Some new technology that creates such wealth and comfort that average people no longer have to work and capitalism is transformed into something completely different.
My money's on #3.
Dumb extrapolation (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Dumb extrapolation (Score:5, Informative)
It does, though. College students who graduate into a recession earn 10% less starting out and their salaries don't recover to "normal" salary levels for a decade or more [nytimes.com], at which point they're at a huge standard of living disadvantage because of the time value of money.
Think about it: that 10% is at the margin. It's the difference between being able to save for a down payment on a house (which in turn would lead to building wealth by accumulating equity) versus being condemned to being a long-term renter. Or the difference between starting to save for retirement in your 20s versus starting in your 30s [businessinsider.com]. Or the difference between having an emergency fund versus having an unexpected emergency cause a spiral of debt leading to bankruptcy.
Time for experimenting (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re: (Score:3)
Don't blame the people, blame the environment (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
The robbery started long ago. (Score:5, Interesting)
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
Re: (Score:3)
Neo-liberalism is indeed the problem, but it goes back much further than 1971.
It was invented by a conclave of neo-classical and austrian economists in 1947: Mont Pelerin Society [wikipedia.org]
Neo-classical economics was invented in the 1880s to protect the robber-barons from the single-taxers: Against Henry George [masongaffney.org]
It was based largely on austrian economics which was invented in 1871 as a rebuttal of Marx: Carl Menger [wikipedia.org]
Re:Good! (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, keep laughing, UMC (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Living-wage jobs have been methodically destroyed on both sides of the pond by the greed-pig class.
You mean the class that Trump has been in and actively participated in and encouraged his entire life? Trump is somehow supposed to be the savior now, and we're just supposed to pretend that the first 69 years of his life didn't happen or are just irrelevant?
Re:Yeah, keep laughing, UMC (Score:5, Insightful)
Trump is not going to win. He is pushing the two pieces of the electorate further apart, but he's on the side with the smaller number of voters. He's also almost completely useless with his ground game and his negatives are way too high. He's only talking to part of the Republican party at this point, and the Republicans need more than their membership to win to begin with.
That said, I am concerned about what happens after Hillary wins and nothing really changes. She won't be the worst president we've ever had, but her existence in the office itself would represent business as usual. She's been the designated first female president since I can remember and pretty much represents the entitled political class. If the email fracas showed us anything is that, indictment or not, there is clearly a way things are done for people in her class, and how things are done for everyone else.
I don't really want for there to be some sort of revolution, since that's bad for everyone. And for that reason we need someone who isn't just going to win because they're better than Trump. That's far too low a bar. Trump is far too easy to beat, and him losing is only going to make the mob madder.
Re: (Score:3)
Trump is not going to win.
Trump is going to win in a landslide.
A vote for him is a vote against the Bushes, the Clintons and Obama.... so Trump will get all the votes from people who hate politicians and lobbyists. Hillary will win what is left: D.C. metro area.
Re: (Score:3)
No, the root cause is _not_ competition from all over the world. What is the root cause is the USA not winning in the competition. The competition is not that strong - they are using manual labor for a lot of things and paying their workers peanuts to do it. They're in poverty, and forcing us into poverty.
But how can that do that? I mean, there are things like shipping costs and other things like tariffs, which we don't have any of. Oh, THEY have tariffs against our goods, but we don't tariff anything
Re:Yeah, keep laughing, UMC (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Good! (Score:5, Insightful)
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!
Re:Good! (Score:4, Insightful)
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".
Re:Good! (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re: (Score:3)
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.)
Re: (Score:3)
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.
Re: Good! (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Re: (Score:3)
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
Outsourcing to 2nd World Countries (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
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 generat
Re: (Score:3)
Re: Good! (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Good! (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Too limited a perspective (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
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.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Or, you could buy two and have a pair of Tatas.
Re:Good! (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re: (Score:3)
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 the
Re: (Score:3)
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 wha
Re: (Score:3)
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.
Re: (Score:3)
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 h
Re: (Score:3)
That's a microaggression against my degree in environmental science.
Re: (Score:3)
I would say they are approximately snowflake size.
Re: (Score:3)
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.
At $15 an hour? Forget ANY fast food labor (Score:5, Insightful)
All those jobs will be automated.
The real minimum wage is $0.
Re:Globalization is GREAT! (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Globalization is GREAT! (Score:5, Interesting)
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....
Re: (Score:3)
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
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It sure is. Nearly 1 billion people have been taken out of extreme poverty in 20 years. [economist.com] Or do you hate foreigners and support extreme poverty? Maybe we should keep them poor and send aid, it's another option.
captcha: disrupts
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Perhaps they should stop chasing pokemon (Score:5, Insightful)
I think I should point out how addicted to TV Generation X is/was. I think your backwards-vision is rose tinted.
Re: (Score:3)
It might be a nitpick, or it might not - but your 11 hours/day number is for all adults, not just millennials. This article seems to indicate that they spend 4 hours looking at screens. [variety.com]
Re: (Score:3)
Maybe this whole concept of throwing anyone born from the late 60s through the mid 80s is just silly - I was born in the mid-70s and the 24-hour TV was well established by the time I was 10 or so. For someone born in the mid 60s, the situation would be very different, and people born in the 80s would have had hundreds of channels available.
Re:Perhaps they should stop chasing pokemon (Score:5, Insightful)
Translation: "I got mine, so fuck you!"
Well, fuck you too!
You goddamned Boomers and Gen-Xers didn't "work;" the Boomers got paid fat union wages for doing jack shit and then the Gen-Xers got paid corporate-raider bonuses for dismantling the unions and outsourcing the jobs! The older generations have executed scorched-earth economic policy, then hypocritically blame the Millennials when they complain that there's nothing left.
Re:An important thing to note (Score:5, Informative)
Top Marginal Income Tax Rate, 1970: 70%
Top Marginal Income Tax Rate, 1990: 29%
Top Marginal Income Tax Rate, 2000: 39%
Top Marginal Income Tax Rate, 2010: 35%
Top Marginal Income Tax Rate, Today: 39%
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Citation on the "two times more" bit, please.
Re:An important thing to note (Score:5, Informative)
Top Marginal Income Tax Rate...
Top marginal rates really aren't that informative, because relatively few pay them... and when they were really high almost no one paid them.
For a better comparison, look at the middle quintile (or median, but middle quintile works). Unfortunately the source [taxpolicycenter.org] I found only has data from 1979-2011:
Middle quintile total average federal tax rate, 1980: 18.9%
Middle quintile total average federal tax rate, 1985: 18.0%
Middle quintile total average federal tax rate, 1990: 17.7%
Middle quintile total average federal tax rate, 1995: 17.1%
Middle quintile total average federal tax rate, 2000: 16.5%
Middle quintile total average federal tax rate, 2005: 13.8%
Middle quintile total average federal tax rate, 2010: 11.5%
Of course, that's federal only. I should say that the trend there is the opposite of what I thought it was, since my tax rates have been steadily increasing over that time range, but that's clearly because my income has been steadily increasing.
The trend of all quintiles is pretty steadily downward. Here's a chart I threw together: https://docs.google.com/spread... [google.com]
So I'd have to say the claim that we're being taxed twice as much is blatantly false, at least in terms of federal taxes. And I don't think state taxes have gone up much, but I'll let someone else find that data.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)