The chart is ultra-deceptive because it isolates one variable and ignores all the other attendant charts which indicate massive generational loss of wealth. If real income per hour has actually increased, the marginal lifestyle gain from that increase is beyond a doubt, zero.

Millenials own far fewer cars and homes than their parents ever did, in addition to having less (typically negative, due to debt) net worth. To reiterate, if millenials were to liquidate all of their assets (of which they have none anyway), they would still be in the hole for huge sums. I am fairly certain that my parents never had negative net worth; I know for a fact that they also had much more substantial savings and spending ability in their 20s despite coming from humble backgrounds and working menial jobs.

This isn't about keeping up with the Joneses, it's about reaching zero rather than being in the negative.

EDIT: And, as the other replier so far mentioned, millenials consume very little healthcare while being forced by law to spend vast sums to merely have the ability to spend more money (via high deductible plans) to get shitty quality care. For a time in the previous generation's course, it was normal to have mental health care as part of the standard of care, which has slipped away from us-- now, mental healthcare is barely consumed, and is ludicrously expensive when it is covered under the paltry plans at all.

Nope - cars per capita went up.

http://www.google.nl/imgres?imgurl=http://1.bp.blogspot.com/...

Homeownership has been 64% or higher since 1970.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/de/Hi...

Houses have just become larger since then.

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7002/6843606169_618efc8942_d.j...

You are just plain wrong on all counts.

All those statistics include the generations before the millennials. Perhaps It is our parents who are still buying more cars and bigger homes?

your graphs are just plain useless on all counts

The first chart doesn't even go to the point where the generation in question came of age... it ends at 2005, before most millenials were even legal to drive.

Look at 1979 in the second chart... the trendline for the present is dropping beneath it. The size of house isn't relevant.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/02/18/stude...

http://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/021914... "Over 25% of them had late payments or are dealing with bill collectors, and well over half are still receiving some form of financial aid from their parents. One of the most disturbing findings of this study reveals that seven out of 10 young people define financial stability as being able to pay all of their bills each month."

http://www.millennialmarketing.com/2010/11/whats-not-on-mill...

http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2014/04/30/homeownership...

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/04/chart-of...

http://www.businessinsider.com/millennial-home-ownership-sur...

http://www.bizjournals.com/albuquerque/blog/real-estate/2015...

...

This argument doesn't make sense...people's consumption patterns for various goods fluctuate over time. You want to compare your 20,30,40,50 year old father with your 20,30,40,50 year old self in order to determine relative wealth.

My parents both consumed more education (much cheaper, less supply of students), earned relatively higher wages (inflation-adjusted) in a better job market (less unemployment, more aggregate demand, higher LFP rate), bought into the housing market with an affordable mortgage in a nice area, and are now expecting to collect a decent revenue of social security and health benefits on top of their pension funds.

If this holds true across the population on average, we will consume less education, housing, social security, and medical benefits than our parents. Not to mention have a poorer quality of life. On average. There will most certainly be exceptions.

The solution? Go back to a top 10 school and get that law/medical degree, then spend a decade or so paying off the loans (or have parents pay for it). Or go the high risk/high reward route of a startup and live/work like a college student for 1/20 chance to hit it big and become an angel/VC. Or network your way into finance/consulting/tech management.

> ... it should be easy to name a good or service that we consume less of than them. Anyone care to do that?

Social Security and health care come to mind.

Social security is not a good. Neither is health care - its a category.

Did you mean "the basket of health care goods available in 1970"? I imagine we consume far more than that (e.g., MRIs, statins, etc). Would you be willing to stick to your parents health care choices?

You're missing the part where people actively avoid going to the doctor unless they're super sick/injured because the doctor is too expensive, even with insurance. The paradigm of consumption of medical services has changed: the doctor will not permit you to visit them, and then not get referred for tests XYZ and drugs ABC; it would be negligent for the doctor to not provide the standard of care to the patient, and the standard of care is immensely expensive relative to yesteryear.

Was medical bankruptcy a thing in the 1970s?

> Social security is not a good. Neither is health care - its a category.

Allow me to quote myself, quoting you: "name a good or service".

> Would you be willing to stick to your parents health care choices?

Do you mean the health care choices they are exercising now? Who do you think is racking up the most MRI hours, 20 year olds or 60 year olds?

I'll put a finer point on it, both services are subsidized by the increasingly resentful youth.

At 30, will you stick to health care invented when your parents were 30?

Again - MRI is a service. Health care is a category.

> At 30, will you stick to health care invented when your parents were 30?

Why would I, why would they? The issue at hand is cost; they pay much less than I do to utilize the same services due to now legally mandated insurance.

> Again - MRI is a service. Health care is a category.

Again... the health care industry is comprised of both services and goods, the unequal consumption of which is what you challenged anybody to point to.

The question is whether you are richer than your parents at the same age. If you have more goods and services (including all those cool medical techs that didn't exist when they were 30), you are richer.

I certainly am - in 1980 I'd probably be a cripple. In 2014, cheap airline fares + modern medicine fixed me up for a few thousand.

It sounds like you are projecting your own situation onto an entire generation, completely ignoring the statistics. You aren't richer for having available a resource that you don't need but you are still made to pay for. That is the situation for the vast majority of young people. It is a very screwed up situation where the least able are made to pay the greater part.

Would you give up every treatment not on the market in 1970 if you could pay 1970s prices for healthcare? How many people do you think would?

I note that you still haven't named a good or service that we consume less of.

You've either somehow overlooked the two I initially named - one of which has been actively discussed, or you disagree and have decided to make a sarcastic remark instead of offering a counter argument.

Social security is not a good or service, it's money. You can't consume money. Also, we consume more healthcare today. Also, sarcasm doesn't mean what you think it means. So no, you haven't named a good or service that we consume less of today.

> Social security is not a good or service, it's money.

I'd agree if it were a self funding program, but it isn't. Due to the ever increasing deficit, scarcity increases with consumption - the earlier generations are paying less and drawing more than later generations.

> Also, we consume more healthcare today.

That is news to me - and probobly the entire health insurance industry, how did you arrive at that conclusion?

> Also, sarcasm doesn't mean what you think it means.

I made my point, being aware of my point you stated the opposite in a ridiculing manner: that is the very definition of sarcasm. It doesn't need to be a sassy remark made with an eye-roll and accompanied by a laugh track to be sarcasm.

> That is news to me - and probobly the entire health insurance industry, how did you arrive at that conclusion?

Take any illness you might get and look at the outcome 40 years ago versus today. Look at the maintenance treatments people make for vision, dentistry, and orthodontics.

> I made my point, being aware of my point you stated the opposite in a ridiculing manner: that is the very definition of sarcasm.

That's not the definition of sarcasm.

Houses with big lawns in the SF Bay Area. (Per capita.)

I mean, land is a finite resource, and what with population growth that's happened in heat-riddled places like Phoenix, I think the overall per capita quality-adjusted land ownership has declined.

This is more of an orthogonal population matter, though.