I separate the eras to pre-Reagan and post. When taxes on the Wealthy
were high there was a lot of equality of income. Post-Reagan and
concentration of wealth moved to the top of the scale pretty quickly.
Wages from the upper-middle on down pretty much stagnated outside of
tech. We don't see it as much because we are in tech. But
manufacturing pretty much dried up as companies focused more and more on
income for the exec staff and stock price over everything else. We
could have stayed competitive with innovation in manufacturing but there
was no money in it compared to moving costs overseas. It become more
and more about money making money, i.e. stock market gains over actual
working gain. Then you take the capital gains tax and drop it down and
it gets 10x worse. Now its all about the money hawks and interest
rates that used to be illegal ( usury ) is commonplace. So kids getting
and education now becomes a major profit center because of the cost of
an education getting non-linear and the loans on that being usury. I
was always told that a degree was about making contacts more than the
education. Now it's about the cost of your contacts.
On 10/11/20 2:11 PM, ch...@wbmfg.com wrote:
There was a period of time in the 70s as I recall that you could get
hired on the assy line in Detroit and pretty quickly make your way to
a job paying $25/hour. I am sure that is equivalent to double or
triple that today. And that was right out of high school. Of course
you had to be a union family and some nepotism would probably have
been involved. But kids out of highschool will never again see an
opportunity like that.
*From:* Bill Prince
*Sent:* Sunday, October 11, 2020 2:53 PM
*To:* af@af.afmug.com
*Subject:* Re: [AFMUG] OT good to be a boomer
Yah. Even though I'm a boomer, I think attributing the current state
of the economy entirely on boomers is missing the mark somewhat. There
are a whole raft of issues that are squeezing millenials like
globalization and extreme automation. You keep adding barriers, and
getting or creating a good paying job just gets more difficult. If all
you can do is flip burgers at Micky D's or pour coffee at Starbucks,
maybe you need to think a bit more creatively.
bp
<part15sbs{at}gmail{dot}com>
On 10/11/2020 11:52 AM, Ken Hohhof wrote:
Obviously I’m prejudiced, but I don’t think this whole trope about
all the problems young people today face being the fault of the baby
boomers (and wishing they would die and stop hogging all the good
jobs) is quite accurate.
Yes we had a long recession starting in 2008 (but of course there
were recessions back in the 1970’s as well), but I saw a lot of
parents dipping into their 401K savings and taking out loans on their
paid-off houses so their adult children could live with them, or to
pay for their kids to go to college instead of being unemployed.
Baby boomer 401K plans were a big cushion for millennials and the
economy in general during the “Great Recession”. I think what will
actually hit the millennials is when the boomers do die, they won’t
be inheriting as much money because those retirement funds got
drained. Also, don’t kid yourself that 70 year old boomer greeting
people at Walmart or bagging groceries at Kroger is just continuing
to work for the fun of it, or that a millennial wanted that job
anyway. As far as the “good” jobs, age discrimination kicks in
around age 50. I don’t think Google and Facebook have a lot of
boomers writing code. How many boomers does Elon Musk have designing
Teslas and SpaceX rockets?
Still a funny skit, but I run into millennials who totally blame all
their woes on boomers screwing their generation over. And the “why
don’t they die already” viewpoint spills over into Covid
discussions. Lots of anti-maskers say things like “if they don’t
feel safe going out, they are free to not go out”. Or there aren’t
that many deaths if you ignore the old people who were going to die
anyway. People at least didn’t used to say stuff like that out loud.
*From:* AF mailto:af-boun...@af.afmug.com *On Behalf Of *Robert
*Sent:* Sunday, October 11, 2020 12:25 PM
*To:* af@af.afmug.com
*Subject:* Re: [AFMUG] OT good to be a boomer
very apropos...
On 10/11/20 10:04 AM, ch...@wbmfg.com wrote:
https://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/millennial-millions/3867395
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