I think you're right to be concerned. Not being able to strike out on your own delays family formation, which leads to some attrition of people who never have children for financial reasons. This decreases the birthrate and then on top of the working generation supporting members within its own cohort, they also have to support an older generation of retirees with an ever rising dependency ratio. It's a negative feedback loop that countries like Japan, Germany, and Italy are stuck in.

Both the education and housing problems can be solved. Education can be automated and amateurized using technology, and more housing can be built. Both of these would do a lot to decrease youth debt loads. Medical price inflation is the tougher problem but is less pressing for young people. Eventually we will be old though and then it will hit like a ton of bricks for those unlucky enough to have not accumulated wealth.

"Among Gen Xers who have exceeded their parents’ income, those with college degrees are less likely to surpass their parents’ wealth, mostly due to student loan debt."

Me? Student loan debt set me back years, crippling housing costs, and a crappy 401(k) that is probably worth around what I put into it due to multiple deep recessions during my prime working years. I can't even begin to imagine how bad it is for you under-30s!

This is not sustainable. All the value captured through productivity increases is being captured by shareholders and asset owners now rather than the working class.

By 34 they owned a huge house in the country, several large holiday homes abroad, three cars, private education for the kids, first class flights (for them - I always flew alone to school, economy), motorbikes, you name it.

At the same age, I've done very well for myself compared to my cohort - I own a basement flat and a one bedroom cottage with no roof up a mountain, and have savings - this was from being a director and founder of a 50-ish person business with £MM turnover. I am incredibly concerned for the rest of this generation - if I feel insecure - how does someone renting on a zero-hour contract feel?!?

Part of the myriad resasons I quit my business to wander the world is that I'm done paying for the lavish lifestyles our ancestors enjoyed. Bluntly, it isn't fair, and I'm fed up, and I'm not taking it any more.

That's the issue with this thread: it's only first world perspective, about the time when the difference in income between countries around the globe was completely radical. With globalisation, it jist evens out.

It's not that hard, you put 23k/yr total in the roth IRA & Roth 401k in VFIAX. I do not work in the tech industry anymore and am still doing this, just stop eating out, live cheap.

Compound this over 40-45 years and you and I are multimillionares.

As for the rest, asking someone to live cheap until they're 65, as a way to compensate for systemic malfunction, ehh...nope, let's get political and fix the system.

Then the never-ending wars came. And, many of these people now have serious injuries and most have PTSD. They came back changed.

Now, I would never let a relative join the armed forces. Maybe it was a heroic thing to do at one point; I don't know. But, nowadays they're exploited and used carelessly for missions of dubious purpose.

While I can only speak from my own experience, many of my friends and colleagues (EE) have left the country already. There are lots of good arguments on both sides and plenty of stories to each end. That said, it comes to this, the people in my generation with real skill are leaving. Not all of them, but enough that it's becoming noticeable. Maybe it's always been this way, maybe not, needless to say my sample size is low so draw conclusions at your own risk. That's just my two cents on it (in reference to what it is like for under-30's).

They still have student debt, but with practically no interest adjusted for inflation, and they didn't have to pay for university. They won't be spending their future worrying about their loans.

Grow up in a country with ~30% income tax and ~25% VAT, get universal healthcare and free education, then emigrate and take a job and pay (less) taxes in another country where working actually makes you money.

That's how living in a poor country feels. You still have good enough institutions and human capital to turn things around, but if you wait for too long, those will be gone.

My dad didn't have my education or skills, but he got a job working for the federal government and was shielded from the up and down of the economy. His education was paid for, his home loan was 12k. But he had things too easy and now he has dementia lol.

Increasing automation is going to make unskilled labor a huge liability for countries. This is one reason I don't think some of the anti-immigrant position of many Americans (and Europeans) is unwarranted. Every country should want highly skilled labor to help improve their current account, but unskilled labor is huge future liability. There is already a huge surplus of domestic unskilled labor in developed countries. Allowing unskilled labor to increase through immigration is only going to exacerbate the problem.

(meanwhile lots of the US runs on cheap labor)

They'll find a way to make money, don't you worry about that at all. They'll sooner make you owe money by the mere fact you're born than to give up.

personally i think in today's world in which 0.1% owns pretty much everything or at least controls ownership of everything, it's an unavoidable eventuality, but it's not going to be an easy process of getting there.

These are indeed the kind of jobs that were lost to automation. Truly unskilled labor was replaced not by robots but by cheaper unskilled labor of other people.

That does require us to overhaul the tax system so that income isn't taxed twice when it is paid directly from one person to another.

The 0.1% and their media naturally aren't going to blame themselves, or their trade agreements, or their lobbyists, or their wall street.

  f(x) = 500 / (1-x)

This yields 88.8% being owned by the richest 20% when using 1mio slices (the only reason I'm not trying to integrate symbolically is that I'm too lazy to try to revive my college math skills).

This is strikingly close to the 84% that the article claims is reality.

So, what's wrong with this then now?

The journalist writes that it "should" be different but doesn't provide for an explanation that says why the distribution should be following a different mathematical formula (and which).

Who is being stupid here, me or the journalist?

If you think that having wealth should be rewarded more than creating wealth then nothing I guess.

Geometrically increasing wealth is caused by the "compound interest effect" where wealth begets wealth.

In other words, it's a signal that creating wealth is steadily diminishing in importance while owning it is increasing in importance.

To be clear, I'm poor, i.e. I've failed both at wealth creation and ownership so far. I'll think about how (much) wealth creation can 'distort' the geometric formula.

Simple - they die early... barring a massive electoral shift in governance priorities.

SSI and SNAP have really high velocity. For one thing, velocity is a good thing on its own. For another, they're both composed of everybody's favorite convenient social fiction - money. The both run around 5% of GDP. So say that doubles.

People not working is only actually a problem if the overall economy experiences something akin to opportunity loss from them not doing anything. The map is not the territory and the books are not the company.

Remote work from home, where you are ensconced in your isolation box, is gross, too; as a consultant, I have a home office and I spend most of my time out of it.

(Mind, I have considered buying something in a rural area--but that's effectively a retreat, not a home. Homes are a by-and-large a pipe dream for people who are under 30 right now unless they want crushing commutes or nothingvilles.)

I actually love going on long walks, so the thought of walking a half hour to buy groceries if I don't buy a car seems ok.

I've spent the last decade or so in San Francisco, and none of the local scenes really attract me. There used to be some cool artists around, but a lot of them got priced out. Maybe some other city has a more thriving cultural life, but San Francisco's isn't doing anything for me. I just have to figure out where to move.

Well, I hope that we both manage to figure out a way of life that is good for us.

What you're describing in terms of collapsibility, zero space, and cultural lifelessness is why I have avoided San Francisco like the plague, but San Francisco isn't like most urban areas--when asked why I refused a job with a startup out there I responded with something very similar to what you're saying here. =) I live in the Boston area; the city I live in is on the subway line, but isn't Boston proper.

I live on the top floor of an apartment building; my place is about 1200 square feet. I regularly sleep an off-kilter schedule. My neighbors like me, and me being up at 3AM doesn't seem to bother the downstairs neighbors seeing as how we hang out once a week or so.

Rural areas are fine if that's your thing, don't get me wrong. But there's a lot that you can't get in those areas (and I've spent plenty of time in them) at all.

I too work from home, and the difference is so stark, I can't imagine ever living in a less dense neighborhood again. I haven't gotten in my car in a week. Not going back.

The thing that prevents new construction in many areas is laws designed to "preserve the character of the neighborhood". Homeowners/investors have an incentive to push for these laws to keep housing prices high. However, if they actually own a diversified asset that can grow with new construction by adding new properties, then that incentive is reduced.