Trouble at the millennials In debt, still renting... Meet the doomed generation

[bronxiteforever]

Trouble at the millennials
In debt, still renting and with minuscule pensions to look forward to. Meet the doomed generation
The New European
By JAMES BALL

… There has been a lot of talk over the last decade or so as to whether there is some problem of intergenerational conflict – perhaps even warfare – between millennials and those who went before…. Let us try to end at least one debate: if there was ever any kind of generational conflict involving millennials, we lost. We didn’t lose narrowly – we lost, comprehensively, years ago.

Take the career of a millennial who graduated in 2008 – not a difficult task in my case, as this happens to be the year that I left university…your entry to the job market coincided with the most alarming financial crash since the Great Depression.… but then came the pandemic, and with it the need for the government to once again jettison all concerns about its balance sheet and spend, spend, spend. In this case, the sacrifice was in a good cause: to protect people with clinical vulnerabilities and (predominantly) older adults. The biggest burden of lockdown came on millennials and those younger (especially those in school), the very people who had the least to benefit from it.

Eventually came the vaccine, but before anyone dared to try to suggest a return to any kind of business as usual, Russia invaded Ukraine, exacerbating an energy crisis that was already fomenting. The potential of millions of families shivering all winter prompted yet another opening of the government coffers – and even with that millions are struggling.

… While we millennials are accepting our status as bagholders – a term of art for the person left with the mess at the end of a crash – we should think about the ultimate bagholding: the heavy lift of preventing catastrophic climate change is still ahead of us… The big changes, the big sacrifices, and the big effort is still ahead – and that’s without considering any of the debates around mitigating the effects of climate change, compensating the countries that are most affected, and managing the effects of global climate refugee movements. When it comes to climate, our hard times are ahead.

https://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/trouble-at-the-millennials/

This article is written by a UK columnist and hence it has references to Brexit and the damage it did to the UK economic situation. The article references the smaller cohort of millennials responsible for supporting the larger boomer cohort’s aging population. While Brexit is the challenge for the UK, US millennials have to deal with a crazy GOP which operates with its goal of making government incompetent or nonexistent.

[IbogaProject]

1. Yep

I'm kind of in the middle being an Early Gen X, but these pressures were already afoot during my whole working career. In either 82 or 86 they hiked the Social Security tax to cover some of Reagan's other things, that is a regressive tax that has caused the widespread poverty in the poor areas of the inner cities and all the rural and small town America collapse. I've gotten it from having Insulin Dependent Diabetes with all its attendant extra costs and workplace discrimination.
I feel the solutions will be nationalizing the Federal Reserve so that interest from money being created at interest without the interest ever being created at least can be shared. We need to move our national spending process shifts to be more gradual and end this biannual whipsaws with the change of congress. I'd like our spending changes to occur over longer cycles 5-20 years. I want the Defense budget to shrink but I want the workers to have time to age out or be shifted gradually into civilian areas. I do want national health immediately but that is an exception as it will start saving money immediately, the only investment required would be in any increases in medical personel and facilities. We also have to look at our collegiate system as that debt we saddle our youth with in an economic drag on our whole society.