According to the central bank, those born between 1981 and 1996, better known as Millennials, control only 4.6% of the wealth in the country even though they make up the majority of the workforce, with around 72 million people.
While it is not unusual for younger people to accumulate
Social Security Insolvent in less than 10 years:
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/04/05/insolvency-on-horizon-for-social-security-medicare-soon-expert-says.html
Ofcourse Social Security will never ‘truly’ be insolvent, legally speaking inflows will just divided to outflows. Payouts are already pretty low since CPI has been mucked with over the years.
Pensions are rare simply because union participation is down, and it saves a lot of money for businesses. As this article states that process started in 1980… when you know, millenials started being born:
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/09/07/success/pensions-retirement-savings-explained/index.html
And finally, stats from the Federal Reserve itself: https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/dataviz/dfa/distribute/chart/#quarter:135;series:Net worth;demographic:age;population:all;units:levels;range:2008.2,2023.2
As you can see, being under 40 kinda sucks, and the oldest millenials are about 43. Keep in mind that “millenial” is a bit subjective, the oldest “millenial” could be 38 as well.
The comment above isn’t “bait”, it’s objective reality for many Americans.
No one in their right mind would argue that millennials are struggling. The way the average wage across the world has been driven down is abhorrent. Now show me how this is the fault of boomers.
This is what I wrote in another post:
Everything regarding boomers and wealth accumulation is nothing more than culture wars and a race to the bottom. The real enemy are those that have manipulated politics to allow them to abuse labour laws and taxes. We should not be looking at why some have did well in life, we should be looking at why some are not. It should not be a race to the bottom, it should be about getting more for for those who deserve it.
No one pushing these culture wars like to highlight just how tax systems have changed in the last 80 years.
All the while governments across the world have added loopholes to facilitate tax evasion on a massive scale.
Median earnings have gone up 2% in real terms since 1980. But the disparity between those who have and have not has changed in favour of the richest. The poorest are now much worse off than they have been since the 80s, and the richer are vastly richer.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/185369/median-hourly-earnings-of-wage-and-salary-workers/
Your problem is not with a Pseudo-generation, it is with the way the system runs. Everything is stacked against those without money.
You might be right about the politicians and those in power pushing for those changes but which generation is the one that predominantly voted them in? That’s why a lot of people blame the boomers. Plus, go look at the average age of a lot of our leading politicians.
Just like kids now, kids then did not vote. You are a prime example of why they should be teaching critical thinking in schools. When someone is pushing an agenda, you always have to ask why.
Young people are voting in historic numbers right now?
In the US, Gen Z still only has 10% who are active voters. Recent elections have seen a 4% surge. Not really a great deal on such a small baseline. There is more to do with convincing the young that it is in their interests to vote at each election. This post being one of the main reasons why.
Fun fact related to that bottom number, the one where the amount of wealth we own has remained more or less constant for decades: the amount of wealth we create has tripled since 1960, per capita, constant dollars.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/NYGDPPCAPKDUSA
The model is only working for the few. The last 15 years has seen a tipping point where people are struggling as bad as the poor in the Victorian era. the worst of it is that they do not even feel guilty about it. Some want to double down even more.
Social security has been 10-15 years away from being insolvent for 80 years. It will always be 10-15 years away from being insolvent because of the way it’s calculated.
When the CBO or whoever scores it they can predict certain things like the number of recipients, the size of their payments, and inflation. They aren’t allowed to take into account things that Congress may (but definitely will) do in the future, like raising the cap on social security taxes roughly with inflation. It went up from $160200 in 2023 to $168600 in 2024. This is a rare bipartisan, uncontroversial thing. Congress almost always follows the SSA recommendation exactly.
It would be more accurate to say “if the social security cap stays at $168600 for 10 years, social security will be insolvent.”
The people pushing this bullshit know it’s bullshit. They do it to make people think they’ll never get social security so they can get enough voters on board with killing it, like they’ve been trying to do for 88 years.
Don’t fall for it.
I wish I could upvote you a thousand times. In my opinion the cap shouldn’t exist at all.
If you switch that last Fed graph to show the percentage of total wealth instead (which accounts for inflation), the under 40 category is actually at it’s highest level since 2013. It looks like it hit all-time low around 2010 at 4.8% and has steadily increased since, at the expense of the 40-54 demo.
I wonder if agreeing to pay a bunch of tax money into the system and then hoping and praying the government would pay us back in a fair and well managed way was actually a good idea.
not when the system (whatever it may be) is not actually controlled by us