Op-Ed: Wrong, wrong, wrong. The future may never show up for the young

Millennials (born between 1980 and the late 1990s) and Generation Z (born between 1997 and 2010) are taking an early interest in luxury goods – Copyright AFP/File GREG BAKER

There is a point at which ludicrous economic bad calls have to stop. Now would be nice. The ongoing saga of anyone younger than Gen X has now reached cuckoo land fantasy levels. The future may exist, but they’re going to have to go looking for it.

The issue here is the sheer scale of endless wrong calls being made on these generations. At no point does anyone suggest that life could be difficult for them. It’s like one of those wonderful sitcoms where the heaps of dead bodies don’t interfere with the script.

There’s a reason for this idyllic situation. It seems that obsolete minds like obsolescence. The Millennials, Gen Z, and Alpha can apparently merrily step out into the 1950s anytime they like. You’d think nothing untoward had happened in the last 70 years.  

If you check out a truly gruesome topic called “Millennial economics”, you’ll see a lot of contradictions in the headlines alone. They’re in trouble. They’re doing fine. They make more money than the Boomers did at that age. They’re broke. It sucks to be 33. They’re still living at home because they can’t afford to be anywhere else.

…And so on.

At no point do physical realities get a word in edgewise. If you look at a strange statistical vista called “American net worth by age”, you see the problem.

Eventually you get a coy reference to the fact that in-hand incomes are poleaxed by costs of living, but that’s about all.

Comparison of those generations is futile, as well as ridiculous. The Boomer houses were paid for with hard cash. That cash slowly dripped into the hands of the people doing the paying. If you bought anything, that was a slow process, too.

The media image of the Boomer times is just that – It’s just a commercial. Most people lived on a lower income scale. Being a millionaire was almost miraculous. Now it’s about two inches away from dandruff.

Readers under the age of 60 may not be familiar with the expression “paid for”. It means a situation where don’t have to pay any more on something.  

That doesn’t happen anymore. You are subject to whatever anyone feels like charging you, on their terms. Basic consumer rights have evaporated. If you’re a renter, you have more checks on you than a criminal. If you’re a mortgagee, ditto.

If you’re an employee, you’re suspected of everything. You’re responsible for the disasters despite being the lowest-grade-whatever in the workplace. You’re monitored like Area 51 on visitor’s day. Even your desperate attempts to be hygienic and go to the toilet are major public issues for someone.

The minimum wage, however, continues to be the minimum wage. Cheapskate economics applies up the income scale, too. Your health costs alone could quite easily kill you without an actual medical condition.

You can’t save money because prices go up every 5 seconds. This just didn’t happen in the Boomer days. People could actually afford things. Now they can’t even afford to think they can afford things.

In the 1960s, America had the highest standards of living, health, education, and general well-being. Compare that to this unsightly mess if you must compare the generations. Americans had “Life Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness”. Now they’ve got ridiculous drama queens who can’t even run their own businesses telling them who they should be and why they should hate other Americans. It’s a bit of a comedown.

By the way – Why don’t you overpaid verbose statues and accompanying pigeons try analyzing why that Boomer economic model worked so well, and this one never will?

You had it all. The Millennials, Gen Z and Alpha don’t. The richer 10% may be OK, but that’s where the idea of “median income” stops working. Averaging out such a huge disparity in wages can’t even pretend to be accurate.

What they have is:

Overpriced educations

Overpriced accommodation.

Overpriced health care. (Nobody’s getting healthy except the vampires.)

Overpriced expenses for everything.

An AI-induced ultra gig economy and stop/start employment at best.

A credit market to help you go broke forever.

A finance sector to destroy the economy every so often.

A political system that belongs in the classifieds or the porn industry.

Extremely uncertain working conditions and a paranoid employer class that seems to think Stalin, Mao, and Lenin will be breaking down the doors any second.

Totally unreliable and useless media that thinks it’s important and relevant. You’re not. You’ve effectively demoted yourselves to PR consultants.

Crime and more crime to rip you off endlessly also helps.

As you may have gathered from these delicate inferences, The Mills and the younger generations are doing great. These generations are being told to live in a world that hasn’t existed for 70 years. They’re “lazy” because they can’t. They don’t actually have any money, and if they do, it’ll be taken from them soon enough.

Any questions, theories, or obituaries?

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Disclaimer
The opinions expressed in this Op-Ed are those of the author. They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of the Digital Journal or its members.