An interesting Salon piece here. Apparently some millennials view saving for the future as ill advised. They also are seeing the end of capitalism as a distinct possibility:
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âYoung people are short sighted and dumb.â
Story at eleven.
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âOlder peopleâ, meaning in this instance those of us older than 40, and certainly anyone over the age of 45, should remain aware of the way younger people are thinking. This is not always something you can learn from your kids, either, who might provide too narrow a view of the group as a whole.
I am very sympathetic to younger people, generally speaking, and I surely wish them nothing but the best. But Iâll confess, as well, to less altruistic reasons for my interest in an article like the one in the OP. Decisions being made today by younger Americans will surely impact my own personal circumstances going forward . . . in a great many ways.
And, yes, on a personal note my own age is considerably north of 45.
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Uggghhhhhhh ANOTHER article trying to âgeneralizeâ younger people and put them down. How⌠new! I honestly donât see the point of any of these types of things. It is always the older generation trying to put down the new generation. It happens now, it happened 20 years ago, it happened to this current âolderâ generation 40 years ago.
Yes, the new generation is different, that is always the case. We wonât know how things will change until they are in charge. And if we want to blame anyone for how they are, it should be the people who raised them!
Anyways, it is good to know how the new generation thinks, but in the end it only really matters once they are a bit more grown up.
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Salon pitching the end of capitalism and / or higher taxes? No surprise there. All their headline stories were left leaning politics or high taxes.
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There is a plethora of examples of that strategy right now. Just go to your local supermarket and go ask the 70+ year olds working there how that strategy panned out for them.
Instead of taking charge, some people will always hope that somebody else cares about their financial well-being more than themselves⌠Nothing particular to millenials.
To frame my opinion, this is from someone who lived under a communist economic system for 18 years. That was hopelessly flawed by disregarding human nature and performed poorly for systematically every economy involved. Hoping that a similar system would provide for people in retirement seems delusional to me. Say the US went full-tilt socialism, there is few ways I could imagine its wealth and capital sticking around and not getting invested somewhere else.
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Havenât we all known people in GenX and Boomer generations who âquestion the importance of savingâ ?
And isnât it natural for the youngest to have a harder time seeing down the road 30, 40 or 60 years into their future and deciding that saving for retirement should be a priority today?
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Looking at the actual article, first sentence says : â66 percent of millennials aged 21 to 32 have nothing saved for retirementâ
That % is actually little changed over the past 3-5 decades. So its nothing new.
The rest of the article, I only skimmed. But it looks like anecdotal evidence gathered from random tweets.
Anytime an article is really just summarizing what a few people people said on Twitter its totally garbage journalism IMHO.
I suppose back in 1960 I could have gathered opinions from"some" Boomers 21-35 year olds who didnât save for retirement because they figured that an atomic war would wipe out humanity long before they hit retirement age.
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Doesnât sound any different than when I was that age, except maybe they claim different reasons for wasting their money.
There were people, upon getting their first job out of school, who immediately spent 120% of it on a car and a nice solo apartment, and the ones who didnât, preferring to remain frugal and save 50%.
And why arbitrarily go by retirement savings? Money is fungible, and I suspect many are setting something aside, even if itâs for a house, it still counts.
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âIâll probably be hit by a bus tomorrowâ was one of the good old standby excuses for not saving anything.
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Perhaps thatâs what passes as the new âmillennial journalismâ.
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They didnât invent crappy journalism.
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Itâs cause we all know that the greedy boomers are going to confiscate our wealth to fund their lavish retirements. Never before has a single generation ever done so much damage.
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Millennials know that other millennials are going to destroy the world with computers.
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Baby boomers didnât vote in the politicians that started social security, medicare, and medicaid. One could argue that the GI Generation (Greatest Generation) and the Silent Generation have done the most damage.
Millennials being proven correct at this hour as Trump and the Republicans conspire with Democrats to load TRILLIONS of dollars in debt onto their shoulders and the shoulders of younger people and future generations.
Add to this currently RISING interest rates, markedly increasing the cost of carrying all this debt.
It is interesting watching as Republicans sign their own political death warrants. WABOA
Exception:
If Trump changes his mind and does not sign this spending bill abortion, ignore the above. But as write this, it looks as if Trump will be as guilty as all the other Republican idiots.
Republican message to their (former) supporters:
âDo whatever you want. We do not need or care about your votes.â
My reaction: compliance
Off topic:
A fence is not a wall. Just exactly how stupid do Republican leaders think we are?
The Republican Party: epic fail
ETA
. . . and now
Donald J. Trump: epic fail
Trump just screwed over tens of millions of his supporters. He is done.
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Or thereâs a longer game where they force the issue by making the debt issue come to a head, then try to force reform to the âentitlementsâ.
I canât see any other scenario where such reform would pass.
See the DACA playbook.
My generation may decide to steal property from others and using âcapitalism doesnât workâ as the rationale.
The voting electorate has been dumbed down so much by the government school system that it is probably best to have a contingency plan to leave the US if it turns into the Soviet States of America.
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Genuinely curious (since this thread is already off topic anyway) - what is the difference? Is the goal more to keep people/things out (or in), or is it more symbolic and thus the reason why a fence doesnât cut it?