https://www.statista.com/statistics/266228/youth-unemploymen...
Now it’s Gen Z being lazy.
Crazy how every generation that didn’t get a fair opportunity to live a relatively normal life off normal income is considered “lazy” by the superiors
Given all that, it baffles me that young people don't identify the economy and inflation specifically as the most important political issue. They're always complaining about stuff that people tell them to care about, not things that materially affect their ability to sustain themselves.
Those holding power today are a generation that never ceded power in the fashion that previous generations did, which directly contributes to the contemporary shitshow of abominable wealth inequity married to the ossified world view, lack of sophistication and comprehension of either contemporary problems nor their solutions, and lack of timeline, characteristic of their ages.
While there is no shortage of shrill grifters and abused now abusive collaborators, we are ruled by a bunch of selfish morons and sociopaths in their 70s, many of who are showing active cognitive decline.
Why would anyone be happy? This is literally the worst historical moment I have lived and I'm not young myself, and I lived through the Cold War and 9/11.
The destruction being wrought in and by the US today is literally incalcuable, a total dismantling of generations of work and careers spent dedicating genius and sweat toward a vision now being shit on openly by those who apparently literally believe they can change reality simply by force-feeding idiocy through entirely owned or coopted media channels on an impoverished fearful populace 24/7.
The sooner we see a general strike the better.
Which hopefully will result from the entirely predictable absolute economic devastation as tariffs bite.
It's January 2020—how are you preparing?
Tick tock.
But that is not enough to build any meaningful wealth, 12k over a year is peanuts, it takes over a decade to save 100k good luck buying a house…
I am genuinely baffled as to how I could potentially escape this…
My only exit is over employment or launching some successful business.
No one does it because there are no jobs in those places. We're failing as a society to build sufficient housing in areas of economic opportunity. In some areas we're moving backwards, Manhattan housed 300K more people in 1950 than it does today.
Not every job can be remote and most types of work benefit from agglomeration effects. Pretending that we can will people to live middle Pennsylvania by creating jobs somehow is foolish when we could simply build housing where the jobs already are.
Gotcha.
First time home buyers (meaning those who haven't owned a home in the last three years) can get a loan with a down payment of 3%. 12k would be the down payment for a $400,000 house. The average home price in the US is around $350,000.
There are even better deals available for some people, military veterans for example.
The military/police also suffers different image problems than corporate jobs, but advancement and benefits is not one of them. (I am thinking military -> cleared jobs, not within the military)
Good luck buying your own house/apartment without being married. It isn’t happening.
paying $12k down on a $400k house with a fixed 6.48% rate means your monthly payment is almost $3k per month, and you'll pay more than the house is worth in interest alone. Not to mention if you only have $12k to put down you're _probably_ not in a position to pay $3k a month.
> My only exit is over employment or launching some successful business.
This reads like you've already reached the peak of your career at 28. Do you really feel that way?
That seems pretty unusual for a skilled worker, like you'd seem to be if you're able to bank 12k in savings per year already, and as most commenters on HN are.
More usually, you'd expect to be earning much more in 10 years than you do today and perhaps even a fair amount more 10 yeads later depending on what you're capabilities and opportunities turn out to be.
Do you not feel like that's in the cards for you? Why?
My expenses are about 40% of my net income and yet owning a house or apartment in a city like Munich or Dublin and close to jobs looks infeasible unless I am married.
That of course excludes the fact that I don’t expect to live to see my 50s because of potential health concerns.
And of course, should I spend my 20s and 30s working for seemingly nothing?
That is the core problem, world is much fuller, quadruple that for any major city where most (not only) HN crowd finds good work unless remote. And unsurprisingly, almost everybody wants piece of that extremely limited pie that isn't growing.
> And of course, should I spend my 20s and 30s working for seemingly nothing?
Considering the sentence above you most probably shouldn't. Now how to get most out of such situation I have no clue since I know nothing about it, but some mode of frugal living with tons of personal time (spent ie outdoors) seems like best course. Or move to some cheap dirty tropical paradise that will cost you 500 euro per month and live with locals.
Personal 2 euro cents - maybe world changed dramatically in past 15 years in this regard but I don't think so, not Europe at least. When I was moving to Switzerland back then I had some limited savings (with rather modest mortgage elsewhere that was steadily eating that), I moved directly into Zurich (because its the biggest place and I know german good enough to pass interviews), while not having neither job already nor even a place to sleep. Literally one Saturday morning I stepped out of coach bus in Zurich bus station with big backpack and suit in envelope on my back. Adventure begins (or continues, see below).
First job - find where I will sleep tonight. Managed to find some student dormitory that was also open to outsiders during summer (lonely planet). Once there, started looking for a room to rent, found and arranged it in 4 days, it costed me 700 CHF per month, and this was central Zurich! Total monthly expenses were around 1100chf, very frugal period but I found it liberating. I walked around in forests a lot, took trains to Alps over weekends. Only once I had that place I started a job search (you need Swiss phone nr and be available for in-person interviews within a day or two), took me 2.5 months to find actually 2 good offers (this was quite recent after 2008 crash where folks were advising me against such risky moves, job market wasn't the best). Of course the uncertainty and dwindling savings + mortgage also put some pressure and uneasiness on me, worthy things in life never come without some effort and suffering.
Literally none of my peers wanted to go down this road, they had comfy jobs, but almost all wanted me to find them work in Switzerland once I had landed. LOL that's not how life (or moving to Switzerland) works. What helped me I backpacked through India for 3 months before starting all this after quitting previous job, so frugality was just continuation of already started trend. Nature is for free, so is exercise, and Swiss have tons of those.
What I want to say with all this - you have options, way more than you realize. Follow the path of your own happiness and fulfillment whatever it means for you specifically. Good luck
Previous generations bought cheap crap that came with a debt. That $2 burger actually cost $20 but that $18 was hidden. All the cheap stuff is the same way. When we buy cheap things it comes with a debt.
When we have to spend $10billion rebuilding after a natural disaster? That's that debt coming due.
Beef is by far the worst at this.
Empires grow great when the old plant trees for the shade they'll never sit in.
It is possible both groups of people were just as self-interested, but one did not have the capacity to spend more resources in retirement, simply because they did not have the option to live as long.
A strong focus on the future with the aged proud of the sacrifices they make for the young.
Elders now are concerned with maximum, selfish value extraction and consumption.
They seem to detest and resent the youth and have done whatever possible to structure society in their favor with little regard for what will happen when they are gone.
Young people are berated with constant comparison, whether it be beauty standards, financial success (across generations), or romance.
One day we'll study this period and affirm that globalization, hyper addictive media and pornography come with dark sides.
The actual problem is inequality, but inequality in right/libertarian thought is supposed to be good. So they * reached for a more comfortable explanation involving 'the other': globalists!
* 'they' is a discourse smell, so I will cite some examples: Glenn Beck, Pat Buchanan, Alex Jones, Steve Bannon, Viktor Orban, etc.
It has been annoying, for almost two decades, to witness the success of anti-globalization propaganda.
Economic inequality surely is contributing to depression in young people. Exposure to wonderful people, products, opportunities and ideas from all around the globe is not.
Those two are linked though, exposure to competition from all around the world is the problem you are talking about. You can't have both these opportunities and avoid competition.
I do think this freedom is a good thing, but I also understand it leads to inequality. That is why globalism was typically a right wing position since it helps the rich.
No nation has absolute free trade.
The question is what to aim for.
All else being equal, globalization is better.
The comment claims that 'globalisation' is depressing young people. Well, that's a hypothesis, not a universally agreed-upon fact. And the assumption that it's agreed-upon is probably a product of the propaganda I complained about.
There's a stronger case for globalisation making youth happier, on the whole, and other factors (such as economic inequality) making youth sadder.
This started in the late 70s as that is when we started dropping the progressive tax on high income earners extremely low. This incentivized senior managers at companies, who set their own compensation, to set higher and higher wages for themselves, capturing most of the economic growth of the past 50 years.
Whether you think this type of inequality is justified or not, its worth looking at closely because it is hard to imagine an economy or society continuing to function indefinitely with such extreme difference in outcome between different social groups.
Young adults got tossed into Covid lockdown as teens and higher education students. They worry about climate change. Wars have always happened but now with Ukraine it’s happening in proximity to the West. The second Trump administration is much worse than the first. The old “getting a better life than your parents” isn’t looking great, in fact it’s trending downward.
That people are perhaps more toxically “tuned in” to what everyone else is doing is just the cherry on top of objective reality.
Heck, my first net salary after university (proper CS title) working 100% as Java software dev was what, cca 350-400$ a month? I could afford almost nothing and that was fine and expected. I don't think I need to calculate how many tens of times my salary went up till this day while still doing Java dev. Yet young folks who start are immediately pissed off they only get very high and not ridiculous amounts right out of school, complaining they can't buy some central housing. Buy?!? As said huge disconnect across generations.
All gets chalked up to laziness / too much avocado toast etc, when the truth is the goal posts have shifted to such an extent that for many scoring a goal is no longer plausible no matter how hard they try. This chart captures it best:
[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/e1jrvw/oc_...
I'm sorta on the edge of this (millenial) but man do I have sorry for the younger gen
What did people do to be happy on your average midweek night? No shakespeare every night. No festival. Just the average night?
You went to the local pub, had a good meal, got drunk, and smoked some pipe.
But can the modern guy go do that anymore?
You cant afford to get drunk, federal alcohol excise tax is $13/litre. LCBO(govt monopoly) markup is 100%, ontario basic alcohol tax is 30-60% retail price. environmental levy is 10-20cents but you can return that to get a refund. You still pay a sales tax of course.
You go to the LCBO and $40 for 1Litre but that's >75% taxes.
You then reach for the tobacco pipe and they have >90% taxes on tobacco.
So what happens? People dont go socialize at the pub anymore. Smoking is uncommon, no smoking socializing.
You sit at home alone and shakespeare and chill from your curated streaming choice. How depressing.
oh and you're probably dragged into war at some point, and you eat stale bread once a day. you didn't "have a good meal" at the pub.
the lack of perspective priviledged westerners have blows my goddamn mind. and no, people didn't get "happiness" in the past by being in a constant state of alcoholism - they did it because they couldnt' afford clean water
modern man isn't happy because they have no resilience and are deeply entitled. that's why you have more than any of your ancestors could have dreamed of but you think you're opressed and struggling
sorry but it's pathetic
During the mini warming period in medieval England peasants had enough free time that they contributed their labor to building beautiful churches we still see today. Generalizations like “everyone was happy/angry at all times in the past” are not accurate. There were times of both, and we should look to the times that were good to determine what needs to change in our future.
You don’t need to be king to be happy. A meaningful job with a family, friends, and a country you feel connected too is likely enough for most people.
I'm not even arguing that we drink and smoke ourselves to happy. The point was the socialization. Our society has not replaced this.
High taxation on alcohol and tobacco does not by itself increase life expectancy. That's absolutely not a thing.
You also obviously fact checked this before posting not realizing that it was bubonic plague year and that infant mortality is the key problem here. People who were 35 werent expected to die any year. If you were 35 you'd still live several decades.
No I dont think smoking and drinking at a pub causes infant mortality.
>The average person was working 12 hours/day with much of it being heavy labor.
And high taxation on alcohol and tobacco does not reduce the amount of labour hours per day.
You're arguing against living in the era which is not something I was arguing for.
>No one was going to the pub or having a good meal, they were just trying to survive.
No actually going to the pub was fundamentally something you did every single day regardless of social class.
> I don't understand this romanticization of the past. Does everyone just assume they would be the king? Even then, they would still be worse off than nearly everyone in a modern economy today.
I was never doing that.
Insomuch as the only map most people now have points towards upper middle class consumerism, with a big house of their own, a well-stamped passport, and an enjoyable career that isn't too pressured, of course most people are going to be unhappy.
If we ever might pave a wide highway to that as a society, we're centuries away from doing so, not years. It's not a good map for current generations.
Without sacrificing the positives of secularism and liberal ideals of mutual respect and equal opportunity, we urgently need to figure out a new way to give people more reasonable maps about where they can find happiness without the consumer luxuries they'll probably not be able to have.
marojejian•6h ago