True. However, the problem is: doing that will land a government in a world of trouble.

Firstly, the popular unrest. While in my country, it seems that most people under 30 don't believe the government pension scheme will survive to our retirement, people older than that do hope for their promised pension. After all, that's what they worked so hard and paid so many taxes for. Pull the rug out from under them, and my bet is you'll have riots in the streets[0].

Secondly, loss of trust. Kill off something as big as a pension scheme, and good luck in convincing next few generations to believe you if you want to reinstate it again.

--

[0] - Related - many young people will join too. While I fully intend to support my mother in her old age, if the government decides to take away her retirement money, I'd be pissed personally too - after all, they'll be impacting my finances as well.

Also related: that's why the loss of low-skill jobs by automation can't be ignored by people with high-skill jobs. Because after all, when your father, uncle, sister and closest friends will find themselves unemployed, who will they ask for help?

Retirement pensions are one thing, the other is debt - whenever I hear that all countries are in debt I think of the law of conservation of mass and have an obvious question: who is this monumental, multiple-GDP debt owed to?

I figure it must be the private sector, but in such case - why are they lending? It looks like either there are people with resources they have no idea how to invest in something actually productive or there are people who knowingly choose to invest in this somewhat risky business of "pay companies to do something for the public now and hope that the public will return you more than the GDP of the whole country, maybe it will work out", which is how I see these big national debts.

Who are these investors and how hard would it be to make them cut their losses?

At the risk of committing a blasphemy against capitalism, could it be a sign of insufficient taxation of the proverbial "top 1%"? This doesn't necessarily need to be "top 1% individuals", maybe it's "top 1% companies" or "top 1% banks" or whatever. In either case, it appears that somewhere, someone has some big money which is being spent on public projects anyway but under the guise of an "investment" which may actually be a big dud.

Finally, someone asking the right questions!

The first observation is that if you try to tally "global debt" vs "global assets", a lot of it appears to be missing. This is because the ownership is obscured in tax havens. There's an excellent paper on this: https://gabriel-zucman.eu/files/Zucman2013QJE.pdf

The second observation is that the 2008 financial crisis put a lot of previously high quality government bonds in jeopardy, and we saw who the major bondholders were: banks. Banks are effectively required to hold bonds as "safe" assets to cover their liabilities.

> why are they lending? It looks like either there are people with resources they have no idea how to invest in something actually productive

This seems to be basically true, and is why there is so much SV money sloshing around. There's lots of investment that would be societally useful but the returns would not flow back to the original investor, so either it doesn't happen or elaborate schemes need to be constructed to bribe them with future taxpayer cashflow in order to make this investment.

> insufficient taxation of the proverbial "top 1%"?

Some of whom own more than the GDP of some small countries. And a few who have stolen a good fraction of the GDP of small countries.

Part of that comes through debt funding of future liabilities.

For example, if you invest $1M into a number of small businesses, those businesses make and spend money, buy and sell goods, hire people, and pay taxes in a variety of ways. Hopefully, they're a net positive in a variety of ways.

If you invest $1M into a bridge, there's no additional tax revenue, a brief burst of construction jobs, it will need maintenance, improvements, etc long term. You've created a net liability.

Therefore, many "global assets" simply disappear as time goes on while the debt/liabilities grow. This is why more and more cities are pulling in their borders (aka responsibilities) to let unsustainable streets crumble, water infrastructure collapse, and police/fire coverage dwindle. It's awful if you're in one of those de-annexed areas.

If a bank lends a bridge-building company $1m, that produces a $1m liability for Bridge LLC and a $1m asset for Bank. (In fact slightly more, due to interest). When Bridge LLC spends money on concrete, its free cash goes down and its asset value labelled "bridge" goes up.

In the worst case, Bridge LLC spends the money to no effect and goes bankrupt - leaving Bank to take a writedown on the "asset" side of the loan. But until it does that the loan still exists as two sides held by the two companies which should have the same value.

The "missing" money is money owed where it is not clear from the outside statistical reporting where it is owed to - and in a global sense, the ledger must balance unless we owe money to aliens.

The PDF explains the methodology.

(An unsafe bridge may be a "liability" in the legal sense, but in any accounting sense it's an asset. Maybe subject to depreciation. But unless it's something that you owe to someone else, it's not an accounting liability.)

Not entirely true. If the net effect of the bridge is to connect two communities together more effectively then there may be people who pay property tax that buy land near the bridge, and then grocery stores, restaurants, barber shops, service stations and the like that spring up to serve those people.

A bridge, constructed in the correct location, can easily spur economic growth which can pay back both the initial cost for the bridge and provide enough tax revenue to pay for its upkeep.

When a private bank credit some household or business they get an asset (the debt owned to them) and a liability (the money they just created from nothing) that cancel each other. The entity receiving the credit have the same position but inverted. So, if you take all the economy, everything cancels to zero and not "law of conservation of mass" has been violated.

The debt issue by a country is a very different animal. In fact, probably we should stop calling it debt. When a government issue debt they are creating financial assets that allows the private sector to operate. An interesting mental experiment is to think in what would happen if all the governments pay all the 'debt' and stop spending.

Stephanie Kelton write about those things:

"Our challenge is not whether we can “afford” to make the payments we have promised to seniors, veterans, the disabled, government contractors, healthcare providers, bondholders, etc. (today, tomorrow and into the indefinite future) but whether we will be a productive enough nation to allow the government to make good on those promises without causing an inflation problem. That is the debate we should be having."

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/10/stephanie-kelton-how-...

I suppose they would have to explicitly collect taxes to cover their current spending, not make bets on the future of economy. Isn't it how our civilization worked for a long time?

> Our challenge is not whether we can “afford” to make the payments we have promised to seniors, veterans, the disabled, government contractors, healthcare providers, bondholders, etc. (today, tomorrow and into the indefinite future) but whether we will be a productive enough nation to allow the government to make good on those promises without causing an inflation problem.

I don't really see the difference. If we are productive, the government can compel citizens one way or another to deliver on those promises. If we aren't, it can't and it needs to reduce them - either explicitly or implicitly by devaluing the money they are denominated in or any other creative way it could come up with. So sure, whether the government can afford future spending is the same thing as whether the economy will be big enough to tax it with fulfilling these promises. I think.

OK, so somehow I got back to making bets on future economy. But this time it appears to be a bet made to justify future spending, not current spending, so unavoidable.

When a company lends money to do such that, it is called leverage, and considered a good thing because it allows them to make higher yields on their capital. Shouldn't governments be judged the same if they borrow money to speed up such developments?

So, If the government have pay all its debt and it's not spending anymore, where the money that is collecting as taxes come from?

" don't really see the difference. If we are productive, we can compel citizens one way or another to deliver on those promises. If we aren't, we can't and we have to reduce them - either explicitly or implicitly by devaluing the money they are denominated in."

The difference is what we should be doing now. Should we be reducing the deficit because we will "run out" or money?

or should we try to increase the future productivity creating infrastructure and knowledge?

What of the two options will make it possible to pay in the future?

"OK, so somehow I got back to making bets on future economy. But this time it appears to be a bet made to justify future spending, not current spending, so unavoidable."

I'm talking about investing in the sense of creating real assets. A bet and an investment are not the same thing, even if it is true that many 'investors' nowadays think that it is.

You added content to your post after I answered you, by the way. It's better if you answer in another post.

There's a great Planet Money about this, and what happened when the US paid off its debt in 1835:

http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/08/07/158376579/episo...

At an individual level it's probably a good idea not to rely on the state for anything if you can manage that.

The question is: can do it without generating inflation?

It depends of the productivity of the economy in that future.

The conclusion is that saving money means nothing, what is really important is generate real wealth now so we can pay in the future without generating inflation.

So, investment in real capacity (creating infrastructure and knowledge) now will allow generate the real resources for "paying" in the future. Just the opposite of what they try to sell us.

Never mind how much money you save now if, in the future, there are not real resources for taking care of everybody.

"You were promised $600/month. Obviously, we can't do that because that would require taxing 70% of labor income, which is way past the Laffer point. We're paying you $400/month instead. But it's okay, because we made productivity enhancements that let the same money go further. For example, the food tastes 50% better, so it's all a wash. Plus, you can move ten miles out to a cheaper apartment because construction and transportation are better now."

Strawman? A Federal Reserve banker tried basically the same thing to trivialize the inflation experienced by typical people: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-fed-dudley-ipad-idUSTR...

If the government increase taxes in the economy in absence of inflation (all else unchanged), there is going to be a deflationary trend.

All the point of the argument is that if we have real available capacity in the economy you can spend, 600$ or whatever have been promised, and, if we don't have real resources available, we can't spend anything, never mind what have been promised.

It have nothing to do with how much money we have saved or how big is the deficit, but with the real resources available at the moment of paying.

My point is that the obligation is phrased as "$600 + inflation index", not "the amount of utility you could have got for $600 at the time we made the promise". Improved productivity can help you meet the latter, not the former. The latter is a more reasonable promise, but the former is what was actually promised.

>All the point of the argument is that if we have real available capacity in the economy you can spend, 600$ or whatever have been promised,

It's not true that "if the real productive capacity is there, then taxing out the money for the pensions is no problem". The evasion behavior is non-linear and there's a cap to how much you can collect with taxes before e.g. pushing economic activity underground and into other countries. (Hence the Laffer curve point.)

To our future selves. Why are pensions failing? Because in the past people moved the money from the future into the present (i.e. the past), and now we are in the future (i.e. the present) the money isn't there. Where is it? It was spent on crap rather than invested in assets. Oops.

What makes something crap rather than an asset? How could they have done it "the right way"?

Another example is a person who borrows money and spends it on home improvements. He or she still has to pay back the money and the interest, but if the value of the improvements is greater than the cost, that money can be recovered later by selling the house. Or that person could have spent the money on... nothing. That might have been fun, but it still needs to be paid back...

A government that issue its own currency is not limited in the same way that a household.

A government, that issue its own currency, could spend (constrained by the real resources available) without creating debt at the same time.

It's true that it would be wise to spend in creating more real capacity in the economy, instead of digging holes and fill them again.

That's not true. Inflation could be though as a ratio between the money in circulation and the productivity in the economy. If you increase both, numerator and denominator you don't get inflation.

Also, "printing money" doesn't create inflation. Spending it when there is not enough available resources can create inflation.

If you have doubts, check the QE programs of the FED and the ECB (ongoing).

In fact, the more famous episodes of hyperinflation are originated because a collapse in the productive economy (the denominator), and not because an increase in money (the numerator).

If real resources are increased, a 'space' is generated for spending, and it would be a real pity if that opportunity is wasted.

Government bonds can be popular parts of the investment mix of private pension funds because they pay out in the currency that those pension funds will need to pay out pensions. That removes any risk of exchange rate changes (say that you know you will have to pay out a billion euros in pensions in the next five years. A mix of technology shares statistically will do better in the long run, but in such a short timeframe, it could do worse, especially if it pays out in US dollar, which may go up or down relative to the euro)

Also, for governments there is a fairly easy way out of last resort: print money. The resulting inflation effectively gives everybody a cut on the government debts they hold, without the government having to negotiate a deal on that cut (that only holds if countries write debts in a currency they control. Debts in euros are somewhat of an exception in this respect, as are the rare country bonds in foreign currencies)

A different question is if they do a good work.

http://www.usdebtclock.org/

The US debt is now at roughly 20 * 10^12 USD, while according to:

http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21631129...

The top 0.01% hold assets of close to 6 * 10^12 USD (371 * 10^6 * 16 * 10^3). Expand to the top 0.1 % and the number is 11.5 * 10^12 USD. Note that the article is from 2014, at the time the debt was at ~ 19 * 10^12 USD:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_debt_of_the_United_St...

So simply taking everything from the top 0.1 % (not the top 1%) would cover roughly half the debt. Seems like an additional 20% taxation might make for reasonable down payment, though.

Far better would be even small levels of property tax, land value tax, and (important for 21st century) intellectual property tax. IP licensing fees are a key component of how many big businesses shuffle money into low-tax jurisdictions.

Oh, and kill the tax secrecy havens. This is already starting to happen, but it's a very long slow process.

In a book called Debt, the First 5000 years they explore this concept and uses it to explain why nations tend to independently concludes that you must have laws that regulate lending. If not you get periodical unrest where the populace go and burn down the debt ledges, and in some historical places this happened as often as once every few years. Collapse of the law don't permanently scare away investors.

Not to say that unrest and collapsing the rule of law is a good thing.

I am not however, in anyway against a larger tax on the wealthy or at the very least the elimination of tax loop holes.

One of the bigger ones is pension plans for private companies which legally cannot invest in anything sensible. This is why companies are pushing their employees to invest in a 401k: the 401k can invest in something with a nice rate of return.

Making them cut their losses might not be hard though - private pensions are generally believed to be underfunded. It is generally accepted that many companies will cut their pensions anyway when they cannot afford them.

There are lots of other buyers of debt though.

you need to ask Cui Bono "Who benefits" when you read articles like this

It is productive, aka it produces a return. If you have another idea of "productive" to a lender, let me know.

1) Maintain the ratio of working life to retired life by increasing retirement age in proportion to increased life expectancy. Which meant increasing retirement age to 67 by something like 2050.

2) Reduce the triple lock of pensions - which means the state pension rises by a minimum of either 2.5%, the rate of inflation or average earnings growth, whichever is largest - to a double lock, which only includes the latter two elements.

3) Means test the payment of winter fuel allowance, which is a yearly payment of about £300 made to everyone above a certain age, so that it would not be received by wealthy pensioners.

4) Put in place what was effectively an inheritance tax for payment of social care (i.e. care homes and in-home care) after death, which is currently both criminally underfunded and also massively expensive.

In combination, this is something like £15bn each year of extra spending now, rising to £50-70bn each year within the next 30 years.

All of these measures were opposed by Labour, and their most enthusiastic supporters are the young.

This is the one policy of the Tories that I supported. There's been a massive transfer of unearned housing wealth to the elderly in recent years, owing to property price increases. It's criminal to tax young people to pay for elderly care, when those same young people cannot afford housing, housing that is owned by the elderly they'll be paying to care for.

This is exactly how the old are eating the young.

Nothing close to the size of the transfer from poor & middle class to the very, very rich.

"This is exactly how the old are eating the young."

The wealthy are explicitly trying to create a divide between young and old precisely so that the old can be relied upon to offer no resistance to student loan increases that soak the young while the young can be relied upon to offer no resistance to cuts to pensions and elderly care.

If young people are complicit in this game of divide and conquer they'll ultimately only hurt themselves.

And 80% of the country's wealth is with the 60+ crowd (this is getting worse, if anyone has stats that include 2015 / 2016 it'd be appreciated). As they've got both greater wealth and income than the young, and this is getting worse, I think it'd be foolish to call the problem a distraction.

Sure, provided the title was changed to "the rich are eating the young and the old are doing slightly better than the young".

I don't think that was the impression they were trying to give though.

The middle and working classes are much less powerful political bloc if they are fighting each another (young/old). Hence the steady flow of articles like this one pitting "boomers" against "millenials" and vice versa.

The provision of decent pensions, free education and social welfare was affordable in the 50s-80s when the country was much poorer and the idea that it has become less affordable because we live slightly longer after many decades of massive economic growth is, to put it bluntly, economically illiterate. The money is there.

The GDP per capita, by contrast, has increased 300% in 2005 adjusted dollars.

This is the metric that answers the question "why are pensions deemed unaffordable?", not birth/aging/death rates:

http://retired.talkingpointsmemo.com/images/productivity.png

Now, you might say, well they got a very expensive kind of illness, and so they should pay for it, because someone has to pay for it.

But, applying the "veil of ignorance" test, of not knowing whether you or your family will be struck by such a disease in the future, it would seem a system where everyone effectively pays insurance to guard against the highly negative outcome would be fairest and most sensible outcome.

I see parallels to the current healthcare fight in America, which seems to take advantage of people's strong belief that "it won't happen to me" to form policy, rather than actual statistics and a general right wing antipathy to these kinds of solutions. I guess it's easier to sell potential bankruptcy to people when they're young and healthy than a 100% certain tax rise.

It was nick-named 'the dementia tax', although that aspect of it was only half accurate, it depends on whether the case was severe enough to need to go into a care home.

Residential care (in a care home) already has to be paid for by the person receiving it. The difference is that now you have to pay the money up front until your assets go down to £23k, which usually means being forced to sell any property to release funds, whereas this bill increased the limit to £100k, and postponed payment so that it came out of your estate after death.

The major change was that care in your own home was going to be subject to the same system, whereas at the moment it is paid for by the state, albeit only available patchily. But a lot of this in-home care is going to be quite limited, I remember with my own grandparents the major help they received was someone coming in to give a bath once a week. That was probably only about £30 a week (£1500 a year) in costs, frankly it would have been better if they had received more care, and more money had come out of their property. If you are the child, and you begrudge £20-100k coming out of your inheritance so that your elderly relatives can be properly looked after, I don't exactly sympathize.

I agree with you about the insurance aspect of it, and that was what was recommended by a cross-party (that is, bipartisan) commission. The problem I see with that is that inheritance taxes are very unpopular, and the more you sever the link between the tax, and the thing that is being paid for, the more that people will object. But I agree that is what should happen, let's hope this 'dementia tax' label doesn't stick to those efforts as well.

And yet, the young overwhelmingly voted for it! A paradox no?

Ok, that's got to be the weirdest mental gymnastics I've seen for justifying rich old people running the world. I'm also suspicious that's it actually true because I'm sure a lot of houses changed hands in the US housing crisis, and it probably went to real estate brokers who decided to rent instead of sell even after getting a bunch of houses in the firesale.

Even if old people realized those gains by selling their house (and going where?), it's not going to be enough money that they'd go out and start buying a bunch of other houses and charging outrageous rent. Certainly not enough to lord over sprawling apartment complexes filled with a bunch of millennial wage slaves.

Maybe, maybe someone in California bought a house for like 50k and turned it into life-changing millions, but to imply that's a massive transfer of wealth for entire countries is disingenuous.

You're right in the sense that it isn't just a transfer of wealth to the elderly, it's a transfer of wealth to home owners, particularly in the prosperous parts of the country, and in the long run to their families. In the short term that's correlated although not matched to young/old, and it gets more and more fuzzy the further into the future you go.

Ironically in effect the left wing party just made a lot of political headway by allying with the right-wing tabloids to protect this inherited wealth against being used for care of the elderly. There are better ways of organizing it, but I didn't hear much nuance in the campaign against it, and I wouldn't be surprised if all policies even vaguely similar are now dead in the water.

It's also in reference to the UK, where publicly owned housing was sold off to tenants in the 80s at below market rates, and housing markets have been booming ever since.

Petty sure 8 or 9 years of "emergency" low interest rates have had an effect in preventing the otherwise inevitable crash in prices.

I wouldn't take many conclusions from the last elections. A lot of labour votes were actually "not-tories" votes. They didn't agree with Labour, but it's still better than the status quo.

FYI and based on my anecdotical observations, mid- to late Gen-Xers rarely if ever think they'll get anything either. As to your finances when you'll need to support your parents or those of your spouse, IMO just try to get over it. You know it's coming anyway, and so do they.

What might be more concerning in practice as a society is what to do with boomers and early Gen-Xers who didn't make enough (or any) kids. Where before retirement plans it may have been for 4+ kids to take care of their parents, it's trickier when there's a single kid or none.

Aside: the Swedes, if memory serves, have an interesting take on retirement. Namely, there's a fixed-sized pot. What you get isn't based on how much you put in but rather on how much you put in compared to others. I'm pretty sure all countries in Europe with eventually adopt a similar system.

> Pull the rug out from under them, and my bet is you'll have riots in the streets[0].

Let's make this even more fraught.

Imagine that the cohort net paying into the system at any given time has a markedly different national origin / ethnic / cultural makeup than the cohort net receiving benefits.

Further imagine that those two cohorts may have some rocky history and feelings of mutual resentment or recrimination.

This has high potential to get extremely ugly unless managed extraordinarily well.

There is little doubt in my mind that this notion (well-founded or not, consciously or unconsciously entertained) is a key contributor to the current political let's say volatility throughout the Western developed world.

When shit hits the fan I'm convinced politicians will try to blame immigrants, just to distract the native citizens from blaming the government (or each other). What happens then we all know from history lessons.

Then we could concentrate on starting to repair the damage we've done to the environment.

It's not like it's a law of the universe that these man made tokens have to be paid back with sweat and tears.

The existence and power of both of them is also measured in blood

But if the next choice is between extreme nationalists and anyone else who wants to scrap the pensions? I'll take no pension over a potential civil war.

(Later, however, the government did increase many pension payments, from total penury level to grim survival level.)

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2016/nov/22/student-loans-...

This seems to have improved somewhat in the 2017 UK election.

https://yougov.co.uk/news/2017/06/13/how-britain-voted-2017-...

The heavily indebted young only voted in droves this time around because for the first time there was actually a party that actually represented their interests.

Both pensioners and students would be a lot more screwed right now if the left wing of the Labour party hadn't effected a successful takeover and shifted the overton window.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window

You think the ruling party isn't going to react to that by moderating its position?

I find it hard to believe the Labour left has shifted the public zeitgeist as they didn't win in a situation that could have been a walkover for a more moderate Labour.

This is absurd. Right wing Labour had been losing vote share steadily since 1997. The previous election was the worst result in 30 years and that is not because the Tories ran a great campaign. It wasn't as bad as this time but it wasn't good.

Most of Labour's losses wasn't even because people switched to Tories, it was just because people weren't motivated to vote for Labour. Scotland was completely lost to the SNP under Labour's right wing because the SNP ran on a platform of left wing policies.

This time around could have been a walkover for Corbyn if they weren't subjected to internal sabotage from the right wing of the Labour party, as Snowden pointed out:

https://twitter.com/snowden/status/872955838440329217

By the way if you look at the SNP actions it's pretty hard to argue they are left wing.

Now I made myself sad...

The amount of taxes one has to pay compared to the security one is offered feels strongly out of whack for the 60-200k/yearly family salary bracket.

There is braindrain, but also Stockholm Syndrome. I oftentimes see discussions between developers where ones that have left Germany's system get attacked behind their back for being so "irresponsible" and missing out on security systems here, while enjoying, after about two to three years of saving money elsewhere a lifestyle of financial security that is leagues above everything the german social security can offer. There are lots of reasons to stay in Germany, but social security and finances aren't ones if you are a talented developer that is just looking for a good life.

It's a strange tension currently, I'm unsure where this will lead in the long run.

But I suspect this is mostly limited to those and very few other cases (e.g. top tier doctors).

You can earn a lot more in the US when you're young (or at least, mid-career), but you'd better hope and pray that you never get sick, or laid off in late-middle age.

I've never lived in Germany, so I don't know the problems with their system, but the US system is (currently) a "get yours while the getting is good" approach to life.

(Unless you're suggesting that salaries are so disproportionately high in the USA that you can move here, pay all of your German taxes, and still be better off. In which case, I have to ask: what the hell is wrong with economics, and why is it leading to this obvious inefficiency?

I suspect the real answer is: "you can't actually do that.")

Therefore the "free rider" effect definitely exists, but I don't think it is a huge problem, because the numbers of people migrating out and in again are not that high.

Seems far more likely that someone would leave Germany, earn a higher salary in the US for a while, and return as soon as a serious health threat made the disadvantages of the US system clear.

Presumably Germany has some sort of system to tax imported wealth to handle these scenarios.

(Immigration bureaucracy, distance from family, working and living in your second language, navigating an unfamiliar system, immigration bureaucracy, and the risk of being arbitrarily deported)

Germany in particular gets a lot more economic immigrants than emigrants so it probably adds up as positive or neutral.

[0] Assume that I make 150k a year and only live on 50k a year I can put the rest into index funds. In ~10 years my money will be producing enough money so that I can quit and live on 50k a year forever. See http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/01/13/the-shockingly-sim... for the math/justification.

2. Taxes are much higher then, let's say US or Switzerland.

3. Real Estate prices are totally out of whack.

So if you make 60k (a very good salary for an engineer even in a big city) and want to raise a family of four you are basically on the same level as a non-working immigrant family of four. But yes, you have access to schools, universities and health care.

The trend that people are leaving or looking for exit options is definitely significant accelerating.

As a german, of course I don't enjoy paying high taxes, but that changes quickly once you actually get sick. Your health and education should be taken care of regardless of whether you're a janitor or an engineer - or their child, which can't change that status yet.

No. Especially health care is solved much better in most of Europe then in the US, where it is approaching 20% of GDP.

1. Higher wages but this is a tricky thing. Germany exports too much, both, goods AND capital https://thewisemansfear.files.wordpress.com/2014/05/dland_ku...

2. Lower taxes, especially income taxes.

3. Much lower spending on "social" which is approaching a staggering and unsustainable 1 Trillion Euro in Germany. http://www.preussische-allgemeine.de/nachrichten/artikel/soz...

As the first steps I would do:

1. Invest money into infrastructure which is crumbling

2. Invest in military. If you invest 1.2% of GDP in your military, as Germany does, you don't have a military, you have a museum. Actually, an argument that Trump got right in regards to Germany. (Hey, let the Americans pay)

3. European border defense. Germany has taken millions of illegal immigrants (illegals since none of them would have the right to be an immigrant based on Dublin III regulations). Most of them can't even read. They immigrate into the welfare state. I don't judge this, I would to the same in their position. Immigration should be strictly handled like in Canada or Australia.

We were not talking about "propping up the economy", we were talking about sustaining it.

"You get more for your buck by giving the money to the people who will immediately spend it."

This is true. But by "importing all of India we don't make Calcutta rich, we make Germany a Calcutta" as somebody said.

"Germany doesn't need to increase the military."

Indeed it does not. Germany is in violation of her NATO contractual obligations. As long as she can "outsource" her defense and make the US defend her, maybe. In fact, Germany has no military anymore, Germany has a military museum.

"It's not running an empire like US."

She is unable to defend herself. Even Switzerland would be a formidable opponent in the current state. How many working tanks are left? 200 Tanks? How many helicopter pilots? http://www.n-tv.de/politik/Bundeswehr-fehlen-Hubschrauber-Pi... There is nothing anymore. And if you are German you will likely be able to understand the Latin saying: "Si vis pacem, para bellum"

"And doesn't need to find that kind of employment for the uneducated lower class."

What other options do you see for the millions of uneducated, low IQ (please refer to Wikipedia) immigrants do you have in mind? Most of them (75%) are supposed to be illiterate. Just social welfare and mosques?

"And Germany is what it is because of migrants."

Because of immigrants with a cultural similar background. Not because of a massive invasion of uneducated people from violent and tribal societies with a very different religion (I am agnostic). Why did the population of Christians in Turkey fall from 23% to below 1% in the last 100 years? Some things don't match and mix well.

"Do believe. And Japan is fucked because it's not accepting any."

Japan is a highly educated, highly industrialized, non violent, non tribal, quite egalitarian society with a tolerant religion. Yes, they are over-aging. But all industrialized countries are over-aging. So far it seems to me that the Japanese are doing the best for a soft landing. By the way, they are extremely restrictive to Muslim immigration. http://allfourestates.com/why-japan-has-no-islamic-terrorism...

You may also want to read this: http://www.martin-van-creveld.com/monsters-ii/

Perhaps because 100 years ago it was still the Ottoman Empire, which was a far larger state incorporating many Christian-majority regions?

[citation needed] Unless you meant "can't read German when they arrive"? What group/period​ are you even taking about?

They also quote, 70% of refugees that started a "trainee" quit.

In general I would say that most of social safety net benefits should be applied to citizens, and then be scaled down for the other groups of people living there.

If you restrict services to permanent residents than restrict the taxes we pay as well (btw I'm 100% certain I pay more in taxes than I consume in benefits, and Germany didn't even have to pay for my education or early life).

This is one easy way that the government could cut health related costs.

You're delusional if you think your 40% base tax is being mainly spent on education and the health system.

What is the bigger problem is that gross dev salaries are maybe half of what they are in the US.

Those $600+ billion have to come somewhere, don't they? And that doesn't even account for the unaccountable [0].

It doesn't look that bad in % of GDP because of the US's massive GDP, but in pure numbers, the US spends more money on it's military than the next 8 countries on the list combined.

[0] http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-audit-army-idUSKCN10U1...

[1] https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/03/the-us-spends-more-on...

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/04/the-oba...

""" “Free riders aggravate me,” he told me. Recently, Obama warned that Great Britain would no longer be able to claim a “special relationship” with the United States if it did not commit to spending at least 2 percent of its GDP on defense. “You have to pay your fair share,” Obama told David Cameron, who subsequently met the 2 percent threshold.

Part of his mission as president, Obama explained, is to spur other countries to take action for themselves, rather than wait for the U.S. to lead. The defense of the liberal international order against jihadist terror, Russian adventurism, and Chinese bullying depends in part, he believes, on the willingness of other nations to share the burden with the U.S. """

What are countries supposed to "chip in" for? The deterrence of a future alien invasion like in Independence Day?

Why should the world chip in for US Ambitions that result in massive destruction, like destabilizing the Middle East, while dealing with most of the brunt of the blowback of such US foreign policy decisions, in the form of refugee waves?

Nobody asked you to be "the world police" no matter how much you keep telling yourself that, "the people there asked for US interventions", is a tale many US Americans keep telling themselves to keep the "We are the good guys" narrative intact, but it has little to nothing to do with reality.

Because reality knows no "good guys" or "bad guys", in reality such terms are purely subjective. As much as I like the US as a country and it's people, there's a huge difference in perception in how US Americans see their country vs how the rest of the world perceives their country's actions.

"Si vis pacem, para bellum"

No place is perfect and how "bad" a place ends up, always depending on how much an individual adapts to the given circumstances of said place. This holds true regardless of where you are, a democracy, a dictatorship or anything in-between.

Btw: If you want to talk about Crimea then we first need to start talking about Kiev [0]. Of course, that won't happen because then the whole "Russia as aggressor" narrative wouldn't fit as neatly.

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/nov/26/ukraine.usa

That "better" is worth defending against the encroachment of the "worse".

does that get paid to the US directly or do we all fund our own militaries that work...under US control? or based on our own ideas?

i'm just trying to figure out how this is supposed to work.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget

EDIT: Keep in mind that this is just the budget of the national government. Each state has its own budget that barely goes to military spending at all, instead focusing on entitlements, especially healthcare costs.

'We have always done it that way and we will keep doing it that way'. There is very little chance for change and opportunity. Also, very little venture capital.

I don't live in Germany but I can now afford to buy a house. The reason I can afford this is: BECAUSE I don't live in Germany. Yet, buying a house or an apartment in Germany is totally off the table. Why?

1. I disagree with the unlimited immigration into the welfare state that will make the welfare state collapse and totally changes our non-violent open society into a more violent and tribal one.

2. Real Estate or "Immobilien" or "inmuebles" how it is called in other languages. A much better word than real estate. It means "Non Mobile". And currently real estate taxes in Germany are basically zero compared with let's say New Jersey. This will change. The government will sooner of later have to tax the shit out of the real estate owners. And again, it is NON MOBILE, while you can leave, your house can't. In my opinion it would be madness to buy a house there.

I hear that in Denmark as well, but I feel it's often accompanied by a very strong unspoken assumption around what, out of 'anything', one should want to do. Denmark is a pretty sweet deal if you have a decent income, property mortgaged to the rafters (the only real tax break is for interest payments) and a couple of kids in institution/school age (and healthy private pension savings). If that lifestyle does not appeal to you, you are going to be paying through the nose for frankly very little.

This also informs the "ambition" bit. Having high ambitions is firmly in the "should not want" camp, so not a lot of people seem to have them, and the ones that do certainly keep them private if they want to considered polite company. Every year around graduation time, the newspapers have a raft of op eds on how "straight A students" are actually miserable and missing out on youth, while the mediocre students are celebrated for knowing how to live and have fun.

American life is bland! I'm not sure we actually know a way to arrange society that allows for most people to have exciting lives instead of bland or miserable ones.

Which is probably a net positive, maybe even for the rich.

That's an exaggeration. A non-working family (not sure what immigrant has to do with it) does not have access to the same quality of life than a working family with salaries of 60k. Sure, health and education-wise they both enjoy the same benefits, but for sure not in housing as you mention in your third point.

60k is 2800 € net per month. A refugee on welfare would get approximately 400 per adult plus 300 per kid plus rent paid (and free insurance). For a family of four this is 1400 Euro. Let's assume 1000 for rent in a city. This is 2400 so basically the same that you have.

Fact is, even as a full working engineer your available money is not significant different. A policeman with two kids and his wife not working has less money as such a family living on welfare. In fact, he would qualify for subsidiary income.

And we are not talking yet about refugess with 4 wifes and 23 kids.... http://www.rhein-zeitung.de/region/lokales/westerwald_artike...

Police earnings are a bit complicated but basically everyone with kids gets more than welfare after initial training. Some young police officers from Berlin (rightfully) recently complained that they are below that but this is the exception.

Does it apply to refugees only, or to everyone?

But gotta feed them "refugees", eh?

Now, where I do see the problem is that most of the housing is owned by people renting it out (check out Germany in this list [1]). My whole building is owned by the same guy who I guess lives quite a relaxed life out of my rent, while producing nothing. If you want to fight the increase in living costs, I'd start there.

I have no problem with feeding and sheltering refugees.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_home_owne...

Because it's tax smart. If you own real estate, all repair, maintenance costs etc. can be deducted from your taxable rental income. On the other hand, if you live in a property you own, all maintenance costs are paid from your after-tax personal income.

Laws do no change market realities.

How many immigrants do you want to accept? 1 Million? 10 Million? 100 Million? 1000 Million?

Based on the population and fertility rates of the middle east and especially Africa, 1000 Million (1 Billion) would be a number that is not impossible. But, don't you see a problem there?

At which point I would like to point out that this world can likely provide for everyone were the economic ideology focused on sustainability and maintaining (at least) baseline human resource needs instead of demanding permanent growth, potmarked by boom-bust crises every 10-20 years.

At least in my line of work, earning more money has much higher value than earning less and having assistance.

Also, at least where I live, we have our benefits capped. So I pay taxes proportionally to my income, but god forbid I get sick, get in accident, lose my job or have a child and take a child rearing leave - even though I've been paying full taxes >10 years, i get instant income cut by 50%. And don't get me started about pension - currently it's set at 75 years for males - and average lifespan is about 70...

So, to sum up, while earning more money, sure, is nice, but throwing the money you've earned fair and square down the drain to support society which will simply not support you is disheartening to say the least.

And in those three simple words we encapsulate all of humanity's woes

Don't you think this steers people in different directions?

And the benefits are regular and safe relative to a lot of badly paid work opportunities (especially they are not a regular full time job).

I don't think this makes as much sense as e.g. a programmer earning €50k/year vs €80k (especially if you're married with kids, which gives you huge tax deductions here).

Easier: default on the debt made by previous generations. No law required.

If only one country defaults it's going to be hard for them, because the future lack of trust and the inevitable retaliations. If a large enough number of countries default, it's different.

The problem is that if they default and start borrowing money again then it will be in vain. Some debt is inevitable (think mortgage to buy a house) but debt for everything is too much despite being convenient: get the money now instead of with next year's taxes and possibly get as much money as the larger country next door (a competitive advantage but be wary of interest rates.)

Previous generations didn't leave us with much debt. Half of the debt is from post-2007. 85% or so came after 1990.

Previous generations were actually good stewards compared to today.

This is like the "dark matter" theory of the universe, but without any evidence.

(The conventional explanation for health and education cost increases is "Baumol cost disease" due to non-automation.)

I wont deny that cost disease likely has a role in the rising costs of education and healthcare, but I don't think its a controversial statement that rising real estate costs play a role in that too.

So why don't these two line up? I submit two candidate explanations:

a) inflation is actually more an exchange-rate phenomenon, especially vs the dollar, so printing dollars or virtual M2 dollars makes remarkably little difference;

b) CPI does a poor job of capturing cost-of-living due to housing.

The Argentinian bond default from the early 2000s is still being litigated.

Are they? Growing debt is necessary for a growing economy in a debt based society (AKA capitalism). It was the housing debt bubble that kept the economy going (by increasing debt), it was not the housing bubble causing the problems.

"The question is: when do we reach the point that oil supply is growing too slowly to produce the level of economic growth needed to keep our current debt system from crashing?" http://www.resilience.org/stories/2014-02-12/limits-to-growt...

You can also increase the velocity of money; the economy is the product of the supply and the velocity.

> It was the housing debt bubble that kept the economy going (by increasing debt), it was not the housing bubble causing the problems.

A bubble is a problem almost by definition.

When overvaluation falls into a self-reinforcing spiral. Of course overvaluation is only obvious in retrospect. But our industrialised society has delivered a lot of very real quality-of-life improvements, so I think the value is real.

The only people who can logically value the perpetually indebted existence of billions of people and the massive leverage that comes with that as a net gain are the central banks to which the debt and interest is owed.

No. One man's assets are another man's liabilities. And debt creation is always based on a better tomorrow. Why most big companies (there may be very few exceptions) have a shitload of debt? Even Oil giants have a tremendous amount of debt. Debt is always paid back with more debt (in hope of a better tomorrow). This systems works extremely well as long as tomorrow IS better than today. It will collapse, it must collapse when the growth stops. In this regard, Ludwig von Mises was actually wrong since he always describes perfectly a middle ages based trading and marked based society but not capitalism (so after 1750). He also dreamed of "treasure boxes" that entrepreneurs must have in their cellars to do investments. There are no treasure boxes and it is the pressure from debt that give us this tremendous dynamic.

Let him speak for himself: http://www.azquotes.com/picture-quotes/quote-credit-expansio... He is right with that. But what he does not say is that ALL booms bring a credit expansion. This is the very inherent thing of a boom.

Small joke on the side:

"Net worth": http://christianfinanceblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/n...

Exactly. National debt is a liability for the nation. It's an asset for the central bank which created it. Ipso facto the central bank owns the nation.

I guess its true just about as much as any other correlation can be made with anyone who purchases anything. The more valid and underlying issue I thought would be focused on here is the baby boomers who have paid off their houses, have nice pensions waiting for them and refuse to retire after living 30+ years at the same job, while our generation has to re-educate ourselves 3-4 times over throughout our lifetimes (the first time in college being 500% more calibrated for inflation than baby boomers paid to go to college, many of who didnt need to go to get a good job) and change jobs every 7 years to stay relevant, relocate to follow our industries and/or navigate around jobs where we find out there is not career progress for the next 15 years because our superiors won't retire, or require a large amount of effort to navigate around their information hoarding habits to maintain job security.

This along with the fact that as our generation is laden with college debt and switching jobs to stay relevant, the few who can manage to pay off loans, afford to live in nice cities where the good jobs are and set aside money for buying a home, are competing with baby boomers for starter homes as baby boomers downsize after kids graduate from college, so now many jobs, even most engineering jobs outside of software have us held back from higher positions and catalyzing change due to baby boomers, and their cash offers make it impossible for promising young couples or individuals to mortage houses.

The icing on top of the cake is the passive comments I hear from baby boomers about how we are narcissistic and lazy.

1: http://reason.com/blog/2016/11/30/california-supreme-court-w...

You would be surprised what bills can be passed. The 3rd Reich ("Nazi Germany") was supposed to last one thousand years by the way. It didn't. And in the end laws won't enable to circumvent the laws of nature (limited resources).

One might argue this has already happened in the US, just subtly. Inflation (mostly ZIRP driven) has been very high, and is a hidden tax on those with fixed incomes. Perhaps headline inflation indicators are not high, but just look at the largest component of spending (rent) and you realize how difficult it must be to live on fixed pension payments. As a double whammy, seniors who tediously saved money hoping to earn interest income in their later years, find that income yield is near zero. This doesn't even consider the other major component of spending (healthcare)...

Totally untrue. In 2013-2016 inflation was lower than at any time in the last half century. 2017 has been a bit higher, but still lower than all of 1967-1996. Sure, you can cherry-pick a particular commodity in a particular market to make it seem otherwise, but momentary or local fluctuations in supply and demand aren't really inflation. Inflation is a systemic phenomenon, and it's actually at historic lows. The fact that some people make life choices that subject them to rising costs doesn't really have anything to do with inflation.

http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/inflation/historical-in...

And young people are the most affected by this shady way of calculating inflation as they are the ones that need to buy real estate to get on the property ladder.

>>> The fact that some people make life choices that subject them to rising costs doesn't really have anything to do with inflation.

Buying a house is not a life choice. It's a necessity.

Buying a house in a place where real estate will be your single biggest cost is indeed a choice. The way inflation is calculated might not be perfect, but let's not try to make it even more imperfect in a different way.

EDIT: also, even with housing factored in, inflation is still low.

http://cepr.net/data-bytes/prices-bytes/prices-2017-06

I don't agree with your opinion though. If you are career oriented and want to be successful you will be drawn to big cities as that's where the best jobs are and where you can get ahead a lot. And real estate is very expensive there. I do think in rural areas it's also your biggest life expense as incomes are lower there. So it's the biggest cost item irrespective of where you live.

So do those 10-50% raises over ten years.

> If you are career oriented and want to be successful you will be drawn to big cities as that's where the best jobs are and where you can get ahead a lot.

There's a grain of truth here. I'm able to work remotely, and just in the past month I've worked from a variety of different kinds of environments in four states. However, that's because I've built a skillset and a track record by working in close proximity with others at a bunch of startups plus a couple of larger companies. I understand that not everybody has that option.

However, even within a big city you have a choice of where to live. The crappiest place I ever lived was right in the heart of a big city. I've lived in crummy places, tiny places, places with awful commutes, places with multiple roommates to defray the cost. Those were my choices. You might make different choices, but they are still choices. People who make far less money than we do can still find places to live where they can come in every day to clean our offices, cook our lunches, teach our children. If they can, so can we.

It's amazing what you can do if you don't enter the rat race of who has the biggest house, takes the best vacations, knows the best restaurants. There will be time for that, after you've built your base. The first few years after college are still part of the foundation-laying stage. You shouldn't expect to be better off materially, and often you'll be worse off for a while. That's life. At least it's not a permanent condition for those of us in tech, like it is for so many others.

I had this perspective as well (in my 20s), until I had children. I supposed everything can theoretically be considered a want rather than a need. But how many people are really comfortable having roommates live with your family and children?

As for living in "the crappiest place", I lived in a pretty sketchy place during my childhood. We had metal detectors in our high school in Brooklyn. Reference: https://www.propublica.org/article/nyc-school-children-face-... You can consider wanting to go to a safe school a want (vs a need), but who doesn't aspire to that for their children?

Is it not also a choice when (or whether) to have children? I put off having any until I was well established, to make sure that I could provide for them without the kinds of tradeoffs we're talking about. It's amazing what a difference it makes to defer major spending - houses, kids, etc. - until you're further up the salary curve.

> who doesn't aspire to that for their children?

We can all aspire for many things, but we all have to make choices - where to live, who/when to marry, which job to take, which house or car to buy, which trip to take, which money to invest where, etc. Few of us get to have everything we aspire to, for ourselves or our kids. If safe schools are a priority, as I agree they should be, maybe some of those other choices need to be made differently. It's all about priorities.

I could go back to remote and live in some cheap area but again I think it would hurt my career. The path to progression / promotion when working as remote employee is much longer. Being in the office and building relationships face-to-face, and learning how to navigate company politics is necessary to get to the next level.

You need to get higher education, at least bachelors if not masters level, in order to secure a decent income. The cost of this higher education increases at a ridiculous rate, and it's one of the biggest purchases a young person makes.

Then you need to live near a city, the bigger the better. That's where all the jobs are and since work is much more fluid, you need to be where there are many employers. Also, you the advantages of networking capabilities in cities will give you a shot at going big. Living costs near large cities have also increased at a rapid pace, whether it be a home or rental. If you're going to have kids, you want them in the best schools, so you pay high property taxes or pay for private school. Best thing you can do to increase the odds of financial success for your kids is to make sure they go to school with other rich kids and have an wealthy network.

Then you get start getting sick and need medical care. This is also one of life's huge, unavoidable expenses. There is absolutely no way inflation is low for you if you depend on certain medicines, just read the headlines, the price could skyrocket anytime if the patent holder chooses to.

> need

> need

I think we are confusing needs with wants. All good things, but all choices, not requirements.

But does that translate into a quality of life gap? It might not, and needing more earnings/wealth to pay for the same quality of life doesn't make it a rational choice.

No, they don't.

Now, policy makers and media often highlight, and some programs are based on, the “core” CPI which excludes food and energy [0], rather than the full CPI, but since the data is collected by sector anyway, it's virtually zero additional effort to calculate the core CPI in addition to the full CPI; they are just two different aggregates drawn from the same base data.

The full CPI doesn't exclude “a lion share of basic living necessities” (it excludes taxes unrelated to consumer goods purchases, and that's about it.) [1]

[0] in principal, because of high short-term volatility of those components.

[1] https://stats.bls.gov/cpi/cpifaq.htm#Question_13

Well, yes. This is how it is

The point where the dodgy part is for example how they do weighting for things like housing rents, their criteria of non-comparable replacements, idea of product classes (an apple is not an inferior version of an apple; a car is a car invariably of it being considered luxury car or not) and so on. The CPI dynamic has real trouble reflecting real consumer spendings.

This is true. And since money, debt and energy are interlinked, it is very possible that there will be a cliff that we are approaching. Only two questions remain:

1. When?

2. How deep will we fall?

"There is No Steady State Economy (except at a very basic level)" http://ourfiniteworld.com/2011/02/21/there-is-no-steady-stat...

Limits to Growth–At our doorstep, but not recognized http://www.resilience.org/stories/2014-02-12/limits-to-growt...

Wealth And Energy Consumption Are Inseparable http://www.declineoftheempire.com/2012/01/wealth-and-energy-...

Galactic-Scale Energy http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/07/galactic-scale-e...

I suspect I'll retire after the cut, but I'm glad I got out of the pension funds before the cut. I have a kind of private pension fund for freelancers, which, if I understand correctly, is technically already my money, so it can't be looted to fund the retirement of someone who retires before I do.

I am sad to see the solidarity of pension funds break down like this, and I feel a bit guilty that I'm leading the charge, but that solidarity has to go both ways. Expecting future generations to pay the entire bill for the greed and mismanagement of today, is not solidarity; that's exploitation.

Wrong.

The only difference is that your pension fund will not be "looted", it will have to cut its payouts because its investments don't yield the same returns as they did before. Inflation will do the rest.

Private pension funds and investments are no more sustainable or "honest" than public pensions.

The underlying problem is the same: the currently working population has to produce the goods and services for themselves as well as for pensioners. If they cannot produce enough of something, some people won't get that thing, and it doesn't matter what some numbers in accounts say.

Only if the economy goes down and inflation goes up. At the moment, inflation is low and the economy is growing.

My problem is not so much that I'm exposed to the whims of the economy, because that's unavoidable. My problem is when I need to pay extra so others don't have to feel the whims of the economy while I get to feel it double.

Not only Greece; it's the same in Germany. People who have worked their whole life sometimes have a lower pension than they would receive if they would apply for welfare.

Many public employee pensions are in trouble is the idea of pension spiking and double dipping. pension spiking comes about by saving up sick and vacation time and cashing it out at retirement or taking on extra shifts. double dipping occurs where they retire from one qualified job and get into another though this has mostly been seen on the political side. You can end up for 100k retirees which is absurd on any level.

the trouble facing reform is there no set outcome in courts. some courts have allowed government to reign in costs and others have forced it back on the taxpayers to make up. California law has been towards and reduction is one category has to be made up in another. Illinois just keeps digging the hole as their State Supreme court has basically stomped on all attempts to fix.

The unions representing many government employees are very strong and politically active and if they cannot stop changes in court political intimidation will be the rule. the will simply work to unseat anyone who doesn't play ball. even the threat of reform by changes in party who runs the state brings out tens of millions of dollars and all sorts of shenanigans (look at Minnesota)

That's enough doom. What other "doom" would there be?

That what little you might have saved/your house is worthless because of inflation and/or punitive taxes. That the economy crashes so you can't take a job/stay on the labour market longer to make up, and your kids, if you have any, won't be able to help you because they have no jobs. That the heath service won't be there, so you risk adding sickness to poverty. Crime and civil unrest.

Basically all the stuff that turns into daily cash outlays in the Sim City game.

Ultimately this becomes fight between funding the liabilities (taxing the rich once again) and eliminating the liabilities (screwing the poor pensioners).

No politicians intent on slashing pensions would ever admit that it's a choice, though, just as they wouldn't admit that it was a choice to make the liabilities unfunded in the first place.

That's why consent for these policies must be manufactured, which in turn is why this article exists - to foment intergenerational strife.

I guess its true just about as much as any other correlation can be made with anyone who purchases anything. The more valid and underlying issue I thought would be focused on here is the baby boomers who have paid off their houses, have nice pensions waiting for them and refuse to retire after living 30+ years at the same job, while our generation has to re-educate ourselves 3-4 times over throughout our lifetimes (the first time in college being 500% more calibrated for inflation than baby boomers paid to go to college, many of who didnt need to go to get a good job) and change jobs every 7 on average years to stay relevant and avoid being too niche to niche ourselves out of career growth, which is the opposite approach of most baby boomers, relocate to follow our industries and/or navigate around jobs where we find out there is not career progress for the next 15 years because our superiors won't retire, or require a large amount of effort to navigate around their informaiton hoarding habits to maintain job security.

This along with the fact that as our generation is laden with college debt and switching jobs to stay relevant, the few who can manage to pay off loans, afford to livei nc ities where the good jobs are and set aside money for buying a home, are competing with baby boomers for starter homes as baby boomers downsize after kids graduate from college, so now many jobs, even most engineering jobs outside of software have us held back from higher positions and catalyzing change due to baby boomers, and their cash offers make it impossible for promising young couples or individuals to mortage houses.

The icing on top of the cake is the passive comments I hear from baby boomers about how we are narcissistic and lazy.

I know these are human beings, and they aren ot to just be thrown out as soon as it bcomes inconvenient for society, but moreso than ever I experience a bigoted increase of hatred for our generation couples with a lack of acknowledgement for our hard work, increase in adaptability and refusal and resistance to wanting to grow in any way to even slightly accomodate our generation, and justifying it all under the broad stroke that we are all wasting our lives away taking selfies, and our retirement funds away on avocado toast and urbanoutfitters clothing, most of which is untrue and irrelevant to the group in our generation that works harder and longer hours and puts more time and money in our education to earn stagnant wages, and for those less educated our age who don't have jobs, they have top struggle with being their own brand and selling themselves or personalities in the service industry because there are no factory jobs to send young men of low education into, and I'm sure the baby boomer generation would be experiencing the same issues if factory jobs were not there en masse waiting for them as well.