Around here, people used to be able to get a job to be comfortable right after high school and buy houses by their low to mid 20s. Those jobs don’t exist anymore.
My parents didn’t go beyond high school and I’m getting a PhD. Mr R’s dad did a master’s and his mom just a BA and Mr R also stopped at a BA.
I’m making more than my mom ever made but less than my dad did right out of high school. On top of that, I have student loan debt which they didn’t. On the other hand, they both married and divorced young which left them basically starting from scratch when my dad was in his late 20s and my mom in her early 30s.
I do well enough to own a 3 bedroom house, pay all my bills, plus pay some of my parents’ bills at 25. On the other hand, I’ll never be able to start my own business if I wanted (like my dad did) because I will never be able to go without employer insurance. My dad had my mom’s work insurance to rely on but Mr R will likely never have a job that offers good insurance.
The best and only solution for income inequality is totalitarian communism. That has been tried.
Too many people live above their means (no offense to anyone here, of course). Too many people take on too much debt early in their lives. Too many people have too many children which they cannot afford. Too many people in the older generations had defined benefit pensions - so they benefit personally but have nothing to pass on to their heirs. Too many people don’t figure out what it takes to retire until they approach retirement.
There are also different metrics of “well-to-do.” Nowadays compared to 70 years ago everyone is better off in terms of basics like plumbing, heat, air conditioning, transportation, communication, education, etc. So a person might not have retirement figured out but he is sitting in a recliner playing Playstation games while watching TV and texting on his iPhone with air conditioning. He is not shucking corn.
Young people today have it pretty good I would say so long as they give a decent effort. Lacking effort, I think young people have it worse because mischief has evolved as well. There is no end to the amount of mischief young people can pursue nowadays.
Extreme levels of inequality (e.g. pre-1917 Russia, various examples in Latin America) tend to induce people to follow the false hope of communist and similar revolutions. Of course, communist governments do not necessarily result in equality between those in power and everyone else (perhaps just exchanging a feudal or plutocrat ruling class for a communist party ruling class).
A ruling class that is smart will want the peon class to have enough opportunity within the system so that the peons do not give up hope and feel that they have to overthrow the system to make any progress.
As long as we continue to measure success by how much money we have squirreled away, then no we are not doing as well as our parents, and our children may not do as well as we have. But when I look at the things that matter, we are doing better than our parents; we are healthier, we are living longer (although my mother-in-law is 98), we have seen all our children grow into adulthood, we have both had fulfilling careers doing what we love, we have children we love and who love us back. And our children will have it even better; they can love whom they want, live in a world where new ideas, experiences and friends are available to them every day, they can choose when and if to have families, just to name a few. Money ain’t everything.
@musicprnt my link was a study by Harvard and Berkeley economists. It’s an actual study talking about the myth upward mobility in the US . The article was published in 2014. It is an easy and interesting read.
I do think our kids have it better than any other generation. Our children were born into the computer age. They have the ability to learn anything on the Internet. They have the ability to become millionaires if they want and if they are lucky. Open courses let them take classes at the best colleges and learn whatever they want. All they need is a desire, the innate intellect and the access to the Internet. They can make friends and connections all over the world if they want.
With good luck and a strong work ethic i believe our kids are in the position to grab whatever ring they want.
H and I have had good lives by all measures, as have our parents and so far our kids. Toting up assets and comparing them doesn’t seem that constructive to me.
It’s interesting to me that we romanticize the long 50s but want to do nothing as a society to get back to those days economically. If politicians even tried to implement the economic policies that were around then, half of the population would have a heart attack.
As someone who grew up poor, I don’t count my success by how much I have relative to other people. I do however measure my success in part by whether or not I’m able to absorb emergencies, by whether or not I am ever behind on bills, etc.
I am solidly middle class and middle income. (Real middle class, not CC middle class.) Our income has probably doubled in the last few years and our spending habits are nearly identical as they were before. But to say that money doesn’t buy happiness is only true, IMO, after you have all your basic needs and some comforts met. It has been my experience that people who say that have almost always never been poor.
With that said, I don’t think that doubling my income again would make us any happier since all of our basic needs are met and we live below our means but still splurge now and then. Though we probably would adopt another dog which generally brings us happiness
My father told me my life was going to be harder than his when I first graduated from college. All of my siblings have done better than my parents. Both of my kids graduated from college with no debt, which was not the case for me. D1 is doing a lot better than me financially when I was her age. Life is long, not sure where my kids will end up, but they are not worse off than me when I was their age. I don’t believe our kids will do worse than us.
The one thing I really wish is better health instead of all of us having chronic health issues, but thankfully we have been able to manage our health as optimally as possible and having assets really helped make that possible.
I am grateful that all my sibs (and H’s brother) are financially comfortable and no one is asking for or needing or wanting handouts.
What is better or worse? Salaries? Size of house? # and make of autos? Vacations taken? You probably get the point.
I think all of my siblings, with the possible exception of one, have had comparable lives to my parents. All have have owned nice homes and 3 of 4 have sent all their kids to college, as my parents did. My two sisters lives changed because of divorces. That changed their life style. And for one, her H, a very successful orthopedic surgeon, was a very bad business person and lost everything.
My children are too young to really know how they will fair compared to us. D1 is already comparable to us as she owns, or is buying with a mortgage, an apartment in Manhatten. It is worth more than our house , which is paid for.
The one I am most concerned about is my son. But his being well off has nothing to do with the economy, his education or his intelligence. It only has to do with his mental health.
So comparing generations and economies is far more complicated than it seems.
DH and I out earned both sets of parents less than five years out of college (his=college professors, mine=small-town banker/sec’y). The 80s were very good to us. Our son will do as well but probably better than we have because he is starting so far ahead–very well educated, no debt, a deep regard for disciplined saving and investing coupled with an understanding of how much is enough, and he will inherit all we have–the luck of the only child. It also doesn’t hurt that he has chosen a military career, so he will have a guaranteed job, at least for a few years. We don’t worry about him at all (until we hear the word “deployment,” but that’s another issue.)
It’s also easy to say this when you came of age in good times and were well-positioned before your child came along. There has been an element of timing and being in the right place at the right time in our lives, and we were fortunate to have a kid with a steady head on his shoulders who has taken advantage of everything put before him without any serious missteps. So far, so good, but we take nothing for granted. The world does not appear to getting any safer or saner. Our son has discussed with us whether or not he will have children. He doesn’t know the answer to that question yet, but the fact that he thinks about this at all tells me that his world view is not as rosy as his parent’s was.
People tend to cherry pick about things in the past. In this context people may cherry pick what they see in the 1950s:
You did not need a college degree to get a good career track job with benefits and pension.
If you wanted to go to college, you could work your way through college even if you had no support from your parents (including living at home), and college graduate jobs were plentiful after graduation.
(For some white people) Minorities "knew their place" and did not "threaten to take over the country" in a demographic sense.
My parents were absolutely dirt poor growing up and in early adulthood. Both took a few college classes at night after working full time jobs and while caring for two small children; neither earned a degree. But as @ChoatieMom said, the 80s were very good to them as well. Without any prior experience in the field, they both managed to get jobs in the computer industry, which of course exploded. They were able to quickly rise up through middle management until they were both making six figure incomes by the time I graduated from high school. They both retired in their mid-50s and even now they make, through retirement, pensions, and investments, more than my husband and I will ever make.
I’m not sure there are still opportunities like that out there anymore. I certainly haven’t seen it in my adult life. It speaks to the shrinking upward mobility that has already been mentioned.
You have to define what a good job is and what benefits you’re referring to. If you’re implying that the average person had a higher real standard of living in the 1950s than they do today, I disagree. Even if you had health insurance in the 1950s, modern medicine, as we know it today, didn’t exist.
Yes, college costs have grown exponentially above inflation, as is well known.
