Revealed: the 30-year economic betrayal dragging down Generation Y’s income

Red1966

Well-Known Member
Exclusive new data shows how debt, unemployment and property prices have combined to stop millennials taking their share of western wealth

The full scale of the financial rout facing millennials is revealed today in exclusive new data that points to a perfect storm of factors besetting an entire generation of young adults around the world.

A combination of debt, joblessness, globalisation, demographics and rising house prices is depressing the incomes and prospects of millions of young people across the developed world, resulting in unprecedented inequality between generations.

A Guardian investigation into the prospects of millennials – those born between 1980 and the mid-90s, and often otherwise known as Generation Y – has found they are increasingly being cut out of the wealth generated in western societies.

Where 30 years ago young adults used to earn more than national averages, now in many countries they have slumped to earning as much as 20% below their average compatriot. Pensioners by comparison have seen income soar.



In seven major economies in North America and Europe, the growth in income of the average young couple and families in their 20s has lagged dramatically behind national averages over the past 30 years.

In two of these countries – the US and Italy – disposable incomes for millennials are scarcely higher in real terms than they were 30 years ago, while the rest of the population has experienced handsome gains.

It is likely to be the first time in industrialised history, save for periods of war or natural disaster, that the incomes of young adults have fallen so far when compared with the rest of society.

Experts are warning that this unfair settlement will have grave implications for everything from social cohesion to family formation.

A two-week Guardian project, supported by the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust, aims to explore this predicament in depth and ask what can be done.

Using exclusive data from the largest database of international incomes in the world, at LIS (Luxembourg Income Study): Cross-National Data Center, the investigation into the situation in Australia, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the US has also established that:

  • Prosperity has plummeted for young adults in the rich world.
  • In the US, under-30s are now poorer than retired people.
  • In the UK, pensioner disposable income has grown prodigiously – three times as fast as the income of young people.
Millennials have suffered real terms losses in wages in the US, Italy, France, Spain, Germany and Canada and in some countries this was underway even before the 2008 financial crisis.

“The situation is tough for young people,” said Angel Gurría, secretary general of the west’s leading think tank, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). “They were hit hard by the Great Recession, and their labour market situation has improved only little since.

“This is a problem we must address now urgently. Kicking it down the road will hurt our children and society as a whole.”

Gurría said there had been a shift since the mid-80s in poverty rates, which started to rise among younger cohorts while falling among pensioners. However, the world of barren opportunities facing today’s young people should be of concern to all age groups, he added.

“Current working-age, middle-class groups are increasingly concerned with their and their children’s job prospects. An increasing number of people think children in their country will be worse off financially than their parents,” he said.

Using LIS’s household survey data, the Guardian examined the disposable incomes and wages of young families in eight of the 15 largest developed economies in the world. Together these countries made up 43% of the world’s GDP in 2014.

These surveys, carried out over decades, are intended to pick up what is happening on the ground in people’s homes, and are the best way of distilling domestic realities from governmental level data.

The data accessed by the Guardian found that in the US, France, Germany, Italy and Canada the average disposable income of people in their early 20s is more than 20% below national averages.

For the first time in France, recent pensioners generated more disposable income than families headed by a person under 50. In Italy the average under-35 became poorer than average pensioners under 80. Using the most recent US data, in the midst of the downturn in 2013, average under-30s had less income than those aged 65-79. This is the first time that has happened as far back as the data goes.

Millennials interviewed by the Guardian said they felt their generation was facing far greater hurdles to establish themselves as independent adults than previous generations did.

Fiona Pattison, a 30-year-old accounts director at a fundraising agency, said that despite pay rises and promotions her lifestyle hadn’t changed in six years. “Everything I’ve made in terms of a pay rise has gone into living and saving. My lifestyle has remained exactly the same. Any dent in employment or income would mean I’d have to go back to sharing again.”

Londoner Tanaka Mhishi, who works in a bookshop, adds: “I definitely think in a lot of ways my parents’ generation was luckier. They had a lot more freedom to do things younger: they were able to go straight from university and move to London and afford their own flat.

“We definitely have to make more compromises. Compromises like if I want to have kids by the time I’m 30, or even 40, can I still have the career I want to do?”

Paul Johnson, director of the Institute of Fiscal Studies, said he feared intergenerational inequality would fuel wider inequality in society because youngsters with rich parents would retain such an unfair advantage in the important years of early adulthood.

Johnson said: “I think the real unfairness issue comes in the sense that it’s become more and more important whether your parents happen to have a house.”

For the next fortnight the Guardian will delve into the fortunes, feelings and finances of the developed world’s young adults, as well as looking at fallacies surrounding them.

In our series, we will reveal that today’s young people are not delaying adulthood because they are – as the New Yorker once put it – “the most indulged young people in the history of the world”. Instead, it appears they are not hitting the basic stages of adulthood at the same time as previous generations because such milestones are so much more costly and in some cases they are even being paid less than their parents were at the same age.

In Australia, millennials are being inched out of the housing market. In the UK, new figures will show the notion of a property-owning democracy has already been terminated. In the US, debt is the millennial millstone – young people are sitting on $1.3tn of student debt.

Across Europe, the issue centres more around jobs – and the lack of them. The numbers of thirtysomethings still living with their parents is stubbornly high in countries such as Italy and Spain, with grave implications for birthrates and family formation in places whose demographics are already badly skewed towards elderly people.

“We’ve never had, since the dawn of capitalism really, this situation of a population that is ageing so much and in some countries also shrinking, and we just don’t know whether we can continue growing the economy in the same way we once have,” said Prof Diane Coyle, an economist and former UK Treasury adviser.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/07/revealed-30-year-economic-betrayal-dragging-down-generation-y-income
Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't see where the "betrayal" was.
 

ThickStemz

Well-Known Member
telemarketing now, bignbushy?

that's a huge step up from working at subway, and especially sucking dick for heroin.
Telemarketing? wtf?

No, I'm a salesman at a resort. I meet with people and sell them timeshare.

Make up your mind on who's sockpuppet I am, I thought it was nicheschicken?
 

Fogdog

Well-Known Member
Foxhole tests are conducted regularly in combat, believe me. There were lots more friendly fire & fragging incidents in Vietnam than were ever reported. If your not carrying you own weight in combat, your dead weight, literally. You become a liability to everyone's chances, it's self determined. It wasn't a jab, I was telling you how it is. If you do not intend to carry your own load, best stay out of my foxhole...
Are you a US citizen? Avail yourself of all that this great country has to offer? Do you participtate in the political process? If your answers are yes, then you are the government & own it's decisions. You have an obligation to support those decisions.
absolutely the foxhole test is something that would make life or death decisions. My point is that across the RUI board, that bit about a foxhole test is abusive. If the only way to be tested is to experience a fire fight, you basically said that one has to be in it to pass or fail the test. So, your foxhole test was more about sniffing butts than a serious comment.

Paddy could be a great person in a fire fight or not. But he is never going to be in one. So why ask? You asked an unanswerable question then made up your own answer. No disrespect, but I'm pointing out that your question was unanswerable.
 

doublejj

Well-Known Member
absolutely the foxhole test is something that would make life or death decisions. My point is that across the RUI board, that bit about a foxhole test is abusive. If the only way to be tested is to experience a fire fight, you basically said that one has to be in it to pass or fail the test. So, your foxhole test was more about sniffing butts than a serious comment.

Paddy could be a great person in a fire fight or not. But he is never going to be in one. So why ask? You asked an unanswerable question then made up your own answer. No disrespect, but I'm pointing out that your question was unanswerable.
I was using it as an analogy to speak about peoples lack of accountability today....I hope no one ever has to actually endure a firefight or dig a foxhole...
 
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spandy

Well-Known Member
A person born in 1950 had every opportunity America could offer them; a high standard of living, a decent minimum wage, a full time job, overtime pay, benefits, low healthcare costs, virtually free college that could be paid for with a part-time summer job

Now, after the Boomers had their party, it's Millennials' job to pick up all the trash; a low standard of living - many of us will never own homes in our lifetimes, multiple part time jobs (if we can find em), no overtime pay, no benefits, high healthcare costs, absurd college costs that ensure a lifetime of student debt..

Please explain to me how millennials have more options

And all the bitching you do, where is that getting you?

Keep working hard, Paddy.
 

Grandpapy

Well-Known Member
China is no longer a communist nation. It is an oligarchy controlled mercantile nation. The oligarchy of the 1% in this country salivate over the kind of control that China's oligarch scions from earlier days of Communist leadership have. The 1% in the US are taking us in that direction.

I don't think we are there just yet. Another decade of the kind of income disparity shown in your graph will pretty firmly put them in the driver's seat. Maybe I'm naive in thinking the die isn't yet cast.

And who in hell is Trump? Is he a 1%er? Is he mole from the oligarchy sent to take control or a true dictator type that the oligarchs fear putting into office just as much as I do?
I'm pretty sure it was Kissinger or Nixon that started that rumor. It needs to stop.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_Party_of_China

1280px-US_productivity_and_real_wages.jpg

Trump is just in the way. He wouldn't be in the race if it wasn't for the new super pac benefits. jmo.

Commerce not people run this country...... See last EPA ruling.

If it's good for Halliburton it's good for the US. lol
 

Rob Roy

Well-Known Member
nope. independent contractor.

but when i was 16, i did telemarketing, like you're doing now.

you like cold calling? or is that what you have to do to pay the bills since daddy cut you off?

Weren't you involved in "creating jobs" for Wendy's janitors when you were 17 ?
 

Fogdog

Well-Known Member
I'm pretty sure it was Kissinger or Nixon that started that rumor. It needs to stop.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_Party_of_China

View attachment 3627336

Trump is just in the way. He wouldn't be in the race if it wasn't for the new super pac benefits. jmo.

Commerce not people run this country...... See last EPA ruling.

If it's good for Halliburton it's good for the US. lol
Just sayin...The "communist" party in China is ruled by a committee of extraordinarily wealthy people that inherited their position from revolutionary leaders. China has an economy driven by private enterprise, exports and a stock market. This doesn't exactly fit the Marx-Leninist model for communism.

Agree that US is dominated by large corporations and a relatively few wealthy people. Again, this doesn't exactly fit the definition of a Democracy but it also doesn't fit the Marx-Leninist model for communism.

It looks to me that neither China or the US political and economic systems are what they are called and that the two country's systems are converging.
 

NLXSK1

Well-Known Member
So, lets take a hypothetical scenario...

A guy in his 20's works for 30 years while evil rich people are making money off him. Now he is wealthy despite what happened over those 30 years.

Now, the liberals want to fuck this guy over again by over taxing him because he is one of the evil rich.

This is how liberals work in America people....
 
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UncleBuck

Well-Known Member
So, lets take a hypothetical scenario...

A guy in his 20's works for 30 years while evil rich people are making money off him. Now he is wealthy despite what happened over those 30 years.

Now, the liberals want to fuck this guy over again by over taxing him because he is one of the evil rich.

This is how liberals work in America people....
listen, if we wanted some retarded fox news hypothetical, we'd tune in to your favorite station. we would even fall asleep to it and wake up to it, like you do.

but that's not why we are here so spare us the drivel and bullshit.
 

Immortalpeace

Well-Known Member
So, lets take a hypothetical scenario...

A guy in his 20's works for 30 years while evil rich people are making money off him. Now he is wealthy despite what happened over those 30 years.

Now, the liberals want to fuck this guy over again by over taxing him because he is one of the evil rich.

This is how liberals work in America people....
Lol you guys were paid more then. If minimum wage from back then kept up with the time it would be around 16 or 17 an hour today. If that person somehow was in the top 1 percent why not tax the Fuck out of him? Making it today as a 20 something is much tougher to do. In order to get similar jobs as people that are 40 or 50 we have to go to school for many years. People I see in healthcare that are older today only have a 1 or 2 year degree. Id love to see some older people that generalize how young people are lazy make it like I have with my situation when they were younger.
 

Fogdog

Well-Known Member
So, lets take a hypothetical scenario...

A guy in his 20's works for 30 years while evil rich people are making money off him. Now he is wealthy despite what happened over those 30 years.

Now, the liberals want to fuck this guy over again by over taxing him because he is one of the evil rich.

This is how liberals work in America people....
Clearly, you are not describing yourself. That wealthy bit, anyway. So, don't worry, you don't make enough to meet the new tax schedules that Bernie will implement.
 

Fogdog

Well-Known Member
Lol you guys were paid more then. If minimum wage from back then kept up with the time it would be around 16 or 17 an hour today. If that person somehow was in the top 1 percent why not tax the Fuck out of him? Making it today as a 20 something is much tougher to do. In order to get similar jobs as people that are 40 or 50 we have to go to school for many years. People I see in healthcare that are older today only have a 1 or 2 year degree. Id love to see some older people that generalize how young people are lazy make it like I have with my situation when they were younger.
Dude, look at that graph posted by @Grandpapy a just a few posts up. Wages for all workers have been flat since about 1985 or so. Only the 1% have been making progress in earnings during that period. That said, I agree that the economy today is recovering much more slowly than after previous recessions and new jobs aren't paying much. 20-somethings today are smart, hard working and facing pretty tough times.

A higher minimum wage will help but it generally benefits the lower 20% of wage earners. The rest of workers need a better bargaining position and the US needs to add more high paying jobs.

I don't understand why older workers are saying what they are about 20-somethings. It seems like more of a hazing or dogs sniffing butts to establish a pecking order than anything else. That your generation is better educated than earlier ones is eventually going to pay off. It always does. Not that this helps anybody right now.

The real cause of economic hardship now days is the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few as shown by the figure in Grandpapy's post. As you say, why not tax the fuck out of the 1%? Put that money to work rebuilding infrastructure, pay off student debt, decrease class sizes, and implement universal health care.

Anyway, the graph below shows how the minimum wage has stayed in the same narrow range for the past 50 years. It never was easy to get started in a career.
 
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bearkat42

Well-Known Member
Clearly, you are not describing yourself. you don't make enough to meet the new tax schedules that Bernie will implement.
This is the part that continually baffles me. The Republicans have tricked all of these broke ass bastards into arguing against policies that will NEVER affect them. Don't have two nickels to rub together, but they're out there railing against a "death tax",among other things. When they die, they ain't leaving their kids nothing but alone.
 

UncleBuck

Well-Known Member
This is the part that continually baffles me. The Republicans have tricked all of these broke ass bastards into arguing against policies that will NEVER affect them. Don't have two nickels to rub together, but they're out there railing against a "death tax",among other things. When they die, they ain't leaving their kids nothing but alone.
NLXSK1 had to take out a loan to cover his fucking living expenses.

he's a penniless pool scrubber from apache junction az. apache junction is known as the meth and racism capital of arizona.
 
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