The parent comment highlights is an important divide that's exacerbating the wealth gap in the USA: The difference between millennials whose Gen X parents are a financial liability versus a financial advantage.
The Gen X'ers are either passing onto their kids either hundreds of thousands in investment and savings income, or tens of thousands in medical and elderly care liabilities. Few in my "millennial" generation are talking about it, but as their parents get older, the contrast is getting more noticeable among friends who have to deal with very different parental situations. It's dangerously perpetuating "wealth gaps" across generations. I fear it will not end well for society when more debt-laden adults see others who are coasting off of what their parents' gave them.
The worst thing about it is that I've completely reoriented my free time to prepare for interviews so that I can double my salary -- that will hopefully give me enough breathing room to accelerate my savings to buy a home and pass on wealth to my children. The game is the game...
To put that disparity into specific financial terms.
According to the Federal Reserve, the average white US household crossed the $1 million net worth line sometime in the past two years with the climb by the stock market and property values. Emphasis that that is the average, the median is closer to $190k-$210k, which is comparable to some of the wealthiest median household wealth nations such as Belgium, Australia and Switzerland.
The median white household wealth figure is only surpassed by the median asian household figure (asian households still trail white households on the average figure; due to a difference in duration of time to accumulate larger generational wealth).
The average black US household has an average net worth of about $150k for 2018, and a median of about ~$20,000. The Fed's figure is generally that black US households have less than 15% the wealth of white and asian households.
The average hispanic US household has an average net worth of about $200k for 2018, and a median of about ~$22,000.
Of note, as you'd expect there's an enormous difference in all households when it comes to education and wealth attainment. The average white household net wealth figure hits about $2 million where the lead earner has a bachelor's degree or higher; without that education level, the average wealth figure for white households is about 20% that (roughly $400k). In black households, a stark example of the importance of education attainment is that the median wealth figure increases by seven fold in households where the prime earner/s have a bachelor's degree or higher. In hispanic households with a bachelor's degree or higher, the average household wealth figure is around $650k (a great figure for most any wealthy nation). That hispanic demographic saw about a 60% (!) increase in their net worth between 2013 and 2019. Every way you look at the education vs wealth figures it puts an emphasis on the huge gap in wealth between households with more education vs less.
Besides the giant budget deficit problem, I don't see any scenario where taxes (on capital gains, income and estates) on the top ~10% don't go up a lot over the next 10-15 years or so. The largest lever the government is perceived to have to go after wealth disparity is aggressive wealth redistribution through taxes.
You of course also see this gap in other nations like France and the UK (which have some of the highest median household wealth levels), where they have very poor minorities with high unemployment rates and little personal or household wealth.
Social cohesiveness obviously falters in situations where you have such wealth disparities over time. That's particularly true if you have the triple hit of little economic growth, aging demographics and ever rising social demands (an increasingly common scenario in developed nations today).
Since there are probably thousands of DB tables with dem and republican hardcoded, my money is on take over.
You mean the person who was 1 at the time Bernie Sanders, having already been involved in the 60s Civil Rights movement and mayor of Burlington for 3 terms, was first elected to the US Congress?
I can only imagine how difficult that is. This is an interesting distinction between western and eastern culture too. I wonder if the obligation to take care of your parents is less pronounced in eastern households that are wealthier.
Like GP, I also grew up in a lower income family and made it out well in tech. My only advantage is that I'm older and started working 15 years ago, which lead to being able to afford to buy a house during the lowest years of the housing market (2010-12) so I have a really low mortgage in crazy bay area. I don't know how anyone in the bay would be able to save up for a house if they have to support their parents in addition to paying their own rent.
The film "Better Luck Tomorrow" explored this - not specifically the parachute kid status, but the trouble that overprivileged Asian teens get into. It's fictionalized but also based on some real events.
For East Asian families, it's still there but it is non-existent from a financial perspective. It's no different from the article even though it describes the US. I've personally seen several scenarios of approx 30 individual families:
1. Kids were either extremely spoiled so they ended up with a poor work ethic, were incompetent, or both. They are not millennials. Parents ended up supporting them for the rest of their lives. Their wealth eventually consumed in one generation with their businesses either being sold or destroyed. In all these cases, the parents were content with grandchildren.
2. Kids were high achievers. Stereotypical scenario of getting into the Ivys or international equivalent, with the right finance, law, or engineering jobs right after with continued progression. Parents still gave a lot of financial gifts even though they weren't needed.
The only real expectation when the parents are financially well off is that their children still take care of them when old age becomes an issue i.e. no nursing home. parents will live with one of their children until they die
1) My parents primary goal was to make life better for their kids. It was in a nutshell why they immigrated in the first place - not to improve their own lives. 2) It's the responsibility of the kids to care for their parents. The idea of nursing homes is so foreign and repulsive to my parents (and myself for that matter).
This is a generalization but, from my experience, that's baked into eastern culture across classes.
To answer your question though, I've seen it as common in both eastern and western families of means to not be expected to take care of your parents as much.
https://www.reddit.com/r/ANormalDayInRussia/comments/9sbeqy/...
While the story doesn't mention an "obligation" of the elder generation's children, I think it brings out a very interesting point. Unlike the US/ Western Europe, in Russia, and likely other previously-Soviet countries, there isn't a noticeable divide between those with rich parents and those without. No one has rich parents.
And still, the article reads to me like "upper middle class kids have it so hard today because they can't get as rich as their parents too easily".
The economic shift is real, but the wealth of our MIDDLE CLASS parent generation was an oddity in itself, not comparable to the reality of most people now OR then.
Pardon the naive question, but what sort of windfall from Mom and Dad to people expect when saving up for a house? Is it common on the coasts for parents to help their children buy a house? I've never thought to plan for help from my parents for anything (I'll be happy if they can cover their own care).
Anyone in my social circle who bought their first home (anywhere on the west coast) and is in their 20's or 30's, they didn't do it by themselves. Their parents chipped in quite a bit.
I live on the east coast though.
I wonder what that kid would say now after reading this article. A lot of the people I grew up with went to crappy colleges. I did too, and we were too broke to even think about tuition so PELL grants funded my education. College Textbooks? You mean PDFs from The Pirate Bay.
I made it out and got a nice job in tech, but like many of my peers it is I who support my parents. I pay their health insurance, I lend them money for groceries, and I'm financing my dad's chemotherapy. Do you know how hard it is to save up for a house (on the west coast !!) knowing you'll never get a windfall from Mom and Dad? When in fact they are a liability budget wise?
I wish more articles were written about this side of the coin, it is my experience that many young people, especially minorities, are shouldering the burden of "elder care" earlier than they ever thought they would.