‘I cannot afford to live’: Gen Z is full of financial angst despite inheriting a golden job market
‘I cannot afford to live’: Gen Z is full of financial angst despite inheriting a golden job market
Gen Z is coming into the workforce and — in the grand tradition of what Millennials cringe-ily called “adulting” — they’re complaining about how much easier older generations have had it financially.
Tldr:
-
Author doesn't understand "the economy" is just about corporate profits
-
Wages are (slightly) up, but not enough to afford food and housing.
-
Author looks at mean instead of median retirement savings and say everything is great.
If you're wondering why she has such bad takes, she's a self described "crypto reporter" who was trying to convince us inflation was a good thing a while ago.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/01/economy/inflation-good-bad-winners-losers/index.html
She's completely detached from reality
91Her name is Allison Morrow if anyone is curious but doesn’t want to give her clicks
30I appreciate the summary and the warning about the reporter. I had a feeling, but confirmation helps. 👍
19
-
Read Hunter Thompson's book "Hell's Angels." There's a section where he breaks down the economics of being a biker/hippie/artist circa 1970. An Angel could get a job as a Union stevedore and earn enough in six months to live on the road for two years. A part time waitress could support herself and her boyfriend.
38The Good Doctor is the only person who died before the shitshow we find ourselves in today both politically and economically whose opinions on it I really want to hear. In football terms he and his writings always had incredible down the field vision in part because he had such a firm grasp on the cultural flows of the present and the national temperature of the US people.
6Now I have to dig out "...On The Campaign Trail" and reread the part where he writes about talking football with Nixon.
A lot of people told me that I should watch the series "The Deuce" with Maggie Gyllenhaal. I stopped watching ten minutes into the first episode because they had a pimp recite some of Thompson's wisdom as if the writers had come up with it on their own.
2
Golden job market? Tha fuck?
36My dude, there are hundreds of jobs available that have no benefits, no security, no retirement investment, no advancement, no personal satisfaction, and don't pay enough to live on. Gen Z should be thrilled at such a golden (shower) of opportunity!
43Well they inherited a market that was golden for the Boomers and GenX
Sadly, those two groups, instead of continuing to fight for workers rights like generations before them, grandfathered their rights into contracts in exchange for sacrificing our rights.
9
Having a job doesn't mean you can afford to live. Ask anyone who has been on minimum wage for the past 50+ years.
30If you've been on minimum wage for 50 years, you're doing something wrong.
-17Be born in a small town hours away from anywhere. All the jobs in your town pay minimum wage. Remember you have no public transportation and no support. Now crawl out of that.
18Poverty is something very difficult to claw your way out of.
Although I meant 'over' rather than 'for.'
10There's not enough higher level jobs. Someone will work minimum wage their entire life. They deserve to be treated humanely.
9
The problem is not finding a job, it's finding a job that pays well while not destroying your mental health, and ideally also feeling somewhat rewarding or otherwise meaningful.
You can earn money doing "something IT" no problem, but say you don't wanna do webdev, your options are easily cut in half. Don't wanna do ML/data science either? Half that again. And then you apply what I mentioned above und suddenly you look at a tiny market.
22Mental health?!?!1! What are you some sort of commie??? I just put my feelings into a bottle of Jack Daniel’s like a REAL ‘MURICAN
11Based on all of the people I know who work in IT, mental health seems to be a sacrifice that often has to be made in favor of meeting deadlines.
7The entire tech sector took off when they realized they could exploit our autism for profit
5Based on my own experience (albeit in Germany) that's all too often a problem we create ourselves. Devs don't like to be late or seem bad, so they'll take deadlines seriously, even though deadlines are almost always made up and irrelevant.
This is of course not helped by the fact that most of us actually like what we do. Last week I closed my work laptop where I wrote a deployment pipeline, and opened my own laptop - to write a deployment pipeline.
5