Newsweek Article: Millennials Control Just 4.2 Percent of US Wealth, 4 Times Poorer...

[Bettie]

People wonder why Millenials aren't happy with the direction of society? This could have a lot to do with it!

Article Link:
https://www.newsweek.com/millennials-control-just-42-percent-us-wealth-4-times-poorer-baby-boomers-were-age-34-1537638

Excerpts:

The millennial generation, people born between 1981 and 1996, make up the largest share of the U.S. workforce, but control just 4.6 percent of the country's total wealth.

Baby Boomers, people born between 1946 and 1964, currently control ten times more wealth than millennials, whose 72 million workers make them the most represented group in the workforce. Although it's not unusual for younger age groups to have less money than their elders, the average Baby Boomer working in 1989 during their early 30s had quadruple the wealth of what millennials have at that same age today. Three millennials—Mark Zuckerberg and Dustin Moskovitz, who co-founded Facebook Inc., and Walmart Inc. heir Lukas Walton—hold $1 of every $40 among their generation.

Boomers control the majority of U.S. wealth, $59.6 trillion, which is twice the $28.5 trillion held by Generation X and more than 10 times the $5.2 trillion held by millennials.

snip

One major factor for the wealth disparity is the overwhelming majority of Americans don't benefit from rising stock prices. The richest one percent of Americans own more than 50 percent of the equity in corporations and mutual fund shares, Bloomberg notes. Upper-middle class Americans have seen a 10 percent drop in their equity interest in companies, as the richest 10 percent of U.S. adults now hold 88 percent of all stock shares.

[brush]

1. The older you get the more wealth you accrue.

Not rocket science. In twenty years when most boomer are gone, GenXers will be wealthier than millennials and GenZers will be in the position millennials are in now.

[Bettie]

2. Did you miss this part?

Although it's not unusual for younger age groups to have less money than their elders, the average Baby Boomer working in 1989 during their early 30s had quadruple the wealth of what millennials have at that same age today.

They have significantly less than what the Boomers had at their age.

[brush]

4. They better vote in Democrats then. When Dems are in power...

more money flows to the 99%. It's just the opposite when repugs are in power.

[Mariana]

9. Plenty of Boomers don't give a fuck about that.

The Millennials deserve it, you know, for being Millennials. That kind of thinking is prevalent among the Boomers who voted for Trump, but there are Democrats here and there who have that attitude as well.

[brush]

40. It's not an attitude. It's just what happens in life if you're not...

a complete screw up.

[Mariana]

41. Do you believe

the only reason the Millennials have difficulty accumulating wealth is that they are "complete screw-ups" in life? That the insane increases in the costs of education, housing, transportation, health care, and many other things, with wages that haven't even begun to keep up with those insane increases haven't had any effect?

[brush]

42. I certainly didn't say millennials are complete screw ups.

Things are looking up. Biden will win and better and more opportunities will open up for millennials. Getting trump the hell out is big. Dems historically always have to come in and clean up repug messes.

Obama cleaned up W's great ressession. Clinton had to clean up after HW Bush and Reagan's big economic downturns and market drops. It goes all the way back to FDR cleaning up after Hoover's great depression.

Things will get better.

[Kashkakat v.2.0]

43. So? EVERYONE had significantly more wealth when Boomers were their age - this is unnecessarily

divisive and misleading. Wealth being redistributed upward to upper 1% has been happening the last several decades starting with Reagan onward.

[muriel_volestrangler]

44. No, that's wrong. The point is the Millennial *share* of wealth is smaller than earlier generations'

Here's the table used:

https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/dataviz/dfa/distribute/table/#quarter:119;series:Net%20worth;demographic:generation;population:all;units:levels

In 1989, Boomers (age 25-43) had $4.35 trillion, those older $16 trillion. 21.3% for Boomers.
In 2020, Millennials (age 24-39) had $5.19 trillion, those older $106.86 trillion. 4.6% for Millennials.

In 1989, the wealthiest 1% had 23.5%, in 2020, 30.5%. Or, if you want to look at the wealth held in the groups youngest generations are mostly in, in 1989 the bottom 50% had $0.76 trillion, 50-90% had $7.25 trillion. In 2020, that was $2.08 trillion and $32.65 trillion. You can see that everyone now has more wealth - but the 'youngest generation' wealth hasn't kept up with inflation, or grown anything like as much as any wealth percentile has.

The growth of the 1%'s share is a bit of the reason for the decline in 'youngest generation', but by no means a complete explanation.

[Withywindle]

3. Wages have stagnated MUCH more severely in the last few decades

In order for the minimum wage to have the same buying power it did in the 1970s, it would have to be $22-$25 an hour (with higher-wage occupations raised accordingly).

My generation, Gen X, did worse than the Boomers, but we are still mostly better off than Millennials, many of whom will not pay off student loans until almost retirement age due to interest building up so quickly they have to pay off the principal amount as many as ten times over.

[leighbythesea2]

8. I just

Wrote this on a friend whos a millennial, fb post of this article. My daughter is millennial. Her 1st post college job had same yearly salary as mine out of college. Wage stagnation. Inflated expense of everything else for them. Gen X at least got an economic run of growth.

[TexasBushwhacker]

18. Yeah, they really got screwed on the cost of college

Last edited Thu Oct 22, 2020, 07:48 AM - Edit history (1)

HOWEVER, just because you can get student loans doesn't mean you should. You should look at your career choice and whether or not your career can pay your student loans. So if you plan on being a teacher, figure out how to do it without racking up $100K in loans.

Now if you're going into a higher paying profession like engineering or medicine, a higher debt burden is probably doable.

I have a middle class friend with teenage triplets. Unless they manage to get scholarships or grant money, they will go to community college their first 2 years. That's just the way it is and they know it.

[Withywindle]

25. That is a lot to ask of a 16- or 17-year-old

When predatory lenders are circling them like sharks, and even their own parents were raised in a time when economic exploitation of students was a lot less violent, and they may not be fully aware of the horrific abuses happening now either.

Rather than putting even more pressure on kids to not have to determine the entire arc of their career and financial future before they're old enough to vote, I think we need to work on changing the system so that it isn't as oppressive and cruel and exploitative as it is.

Yes, I know this is the reality. It SHOULD NOT BE the reality. As Democrats, our job should be to make it better for young people.

[Bettie]

27. Yes...absolutely, your last sentence is the thing we need to keep in mind...

"As Democrats, our job should be to make it better for young people."

I am tired of hearing "why should they get their student loans paid, I paid mine myself!"

Well, the loans weren't life-consuming then and there were jobs that actually paid a true living wage!

[appalachiablue]

32. +10 Amen, well said. In 3 generations my family attended college

and never left with student loan debt. We also entered school w/o having to do an indepth exploration and prediction of the strength and earning power of future occupations and careers.

My grandfather who decided to attend medical school was unburdened by lingering loan debt, same for father who went on the GI Bill, and 5 of us Boomers who gradulated from public and private colleges working p-t some in summer.

That's how it should be and is in most advanced countries, the US is the outlier. Subsidizing college education is the way democratic nations invest in their future, not hampering youth with outrageous loan debt so much that they can't afford to marry, start families and buy homes.

When graduates get out into the workforce they contribute to society and create businesses like my father, an engineer did by starting a new company that employed a number of Americans.

The current system which is not supported by tax revenue unlike earlier times, was initiated by Gov. Reagan and Co. in California. They despised and wanted to curb educated, informed 'hippie' student activists and others who were rebelling against the MIC and Vietnam, fighting for civil and equal rights, challenging the 'free enterprise system,' and calling for environmental controls and consumer product safety.

The US has absolutely an unfair and cruel system that burdens young people, made moreso by those who think nothing much has changed and that the responsibility is all on students. It has to change for a stronger society and healthier world.

[Caliman73]

35. Yes, this "buyer beware" nonsense is exactly what exploiters count on.

Sorry sir, you should have known that you were going to be charged 8,000 to set your broken arm before you fell off the roof.

There is no way that Universities should cost 100,000 not even for a graduate education. I came out of school in the 1990's $11,000 in debt. That is four years of tuition at a University of California school. My son (fortunately got scholarships) was charged $48,000 a year for the same UC education.

One of the reasons tuition is so high is because Universities know there is a lot of "loan" money out there. Education has become a commodity like everything else. Education is not a commodity. It is a necessity for keeping the populace informed and trained to provide technical services and pro-social growth. Our job should be to make sure that people who want a University education should have access to that education with minimal financial impact. Same for technical schools that teach people who do not want to go to University a trade like Plumbing, electrical, HVAC, Accounting, Book Keeping, and others. We as a society have to decide whether we want a populace that is educated or not. Then decide collectively how best to fund that. Making it a competition and a commodity is not the way.

[muriel_volestrangler]

45. That minimum wage decline was pre-1989. Here's a graph of minimum wage, allowing for inflation

[meadowlander]

39. Yes, but that's missing the point.

&t=1s

I suggest watching the above all the way through. There are dozens of ways that boomers have snaffled up material wealth and resources that will never be available to their kids and grandkids.

[appalachiablue]

5. Millennials getting shafted, big

K/R

[Bettie]

6. Yes, they are

and it isn't right.

No wonder they have little hope for their futures.

[appalachiablue]

7. Between much lower wages, high college loan debt

Last edited Thu Oct 22, 2020, 01:13 PM - Edit history (1)

thanks to Reagan, shredding of the safety net, costly medical insurance, climate crises and automation, the world they inhabit will be a constant struggle. I can't imagine, but have much sympathy for these young Americans.

[Bettie]

28. I agree with everything you said

and I hope when we win, there is some attention paid to this, to getting these people on a level footing.

More disposable income means a better economy too. Giving Millennials a hand up helps us all!

[GulfCoast66]

10. Does the article put it in historical perspective?

I mean when I was the age of millennials we did not have much wealth. We had a mortgage and and our 401Ks and IRAs were young. Now 25 years later the story is way different.

I would like to see the percentage of wealth my generation had at that age.

My experience is that a smaller percentage of all generations have less than 50 years ago.

[Bettie]

11. They generally speaking have about 1/4 of the wealth you had

at that age, adjusted for today's dollars.

Most millennials don't have mortgages, they have rent, they often don't have 401ks available and even most GenXers I've known NEVER made enough to make ends meet and invest in IRAs.

We're talking about on average. Yes, there are some really wealthy millennials and some really poor boomers, but generally speaking, looking from generation to generation, you can see the wealth being sucked upward to the 1% anyway.

[Bettie]

12. Historical perspective:

From the article:

Millennials, who are the median age of 32 today, control just 4.6 percent of U.S. wealth, far behind the 21 percent Boomers had at about that same age a generation before. These working young adults will need to quadruple their bank accounts in the next two years in order to match the financial share controlled by their parents during the late 1980s, when the median Boomer was 34 years old.

[GulfCoast66]

13. Thank you for the info.

[Sympthsical]

14. We just want free stuff, man

My generation is getting it every which way. Not just wage stagnation and a lack of wealth. We’re priced out of the housing market. Higher education is absolutely obscene. Healthcare costs have skyrocketed.

I swear to god, right here on DU, when talking about student loan forgiveness, I saw people talking about how they worked part time to pay for college and why couldn’t Millennials just boot strap themselves up the same way?

There is a lot of “I’ve got mine,” in our own party, especially among Boomers. Just a total lack of awareness of what a generation (now approaching middle age!) is putting up with that they never had to.

And that goes double for minorities.

Of course we need to vote for Democrats. They’re our only hope. But we’re putting band aids on problems that will soon require a tourniquet. And come retirement age, we may see an entire generation simply bleed out.

[Bettie]

15. I sympathize

and I also note that when your generation asks for help (like student loan forgiveness, better min. wage, health care, or even action on climate change) the answer is generally some form of "sit down and shut up....but vote!".

GenX (of which I am part) are the first to do worse than our parents and we're generally speaking better off than you.

[Sympthsical]

16. Part of it is also a lack of career security

I have a lot of Gen X friends, and I’ve seen quite a few of them switch careers in their 40s and even 50s. There’s almost no such thing as a company career and pensions any more. The labor market is a free for all.

Fortunately, I think my generation is getting wise to this. My friends in tech job hop every few years, it seems. In the last decade, I’ve job hopped three times and returned to school twice to get certifications.

You no longer put in your time - you fend for yourself. And I think Gen X was really the first generation to start getting the short end of the stick on that.

[Bettie]

17. Yeah, my husband and I entered the work force right as they

were phasing out defined benefit pensions and starting 401k's, it was still expected that you'd stay at one company for years, but that changed pretty quickly and having been at one job for any length of time was a red light for employers.

Oh and raises, that really ended. My first year at my first post-college job, I got 5.7%. The next year, the new MBA business manager capped the raises for those who excelled at 3.5% and the rest of us got about 2%. The only way to get more pay was to change positions or companies.

It was about the time the MBAs took over.

When DH got downsized at 50, he found that the same jobs he'd had (he had been there 10 years) now required two degrees and started at about 10k less than he had started at.

And I know from my younger friends that it is much, much worse now.

[Lars39]

29. Greenspan, Ayn Rand, and Chicago School of Economics

And every college deciding MBAs were moneymakers.

[appalachiablue]

33. +1 The birth of the libertarian controlled GOP.

And so much for liberal arts majors, the B-school MBA grads started to dominate the country.

[Lars39]

36. Agreed

[Jspur]

20. As an older millennial I agree with you about the job hopping

but it still sucks ass. I have had to switch jobs 5-6 times in the last 10 years. I really wish I could stay at one place for like 10-15 years . It would be nice to just have that stability but I know in this era that's hard to get. I had a friend whose 34 just got laid off from his job at Citi. He had a job in IT and this was the first year where he finally hit the 100K mark. He had been at Citi for 5 years and was scared about stability but thought he could stick their for a few more years. He's now on suicide watch and doesn't feel good about the future.

[Withywindle]

23. As a Gen Xer, this resonates

During the 90s boom I was in my 20s and, I thought, doing kind of OK. I had a decent job and I could pay my rent (shared of course, never could live alone even then), and there was some money going into my 401k from my employer - some people still had those then.

THEN the recession hit. Then the bottom dropped out of my industry (print journalism). I got laid off around the same time when the truth came out that my 401k was never anything more than theoretical fantasy football money.

I found another career path and have recovered some, but I certainly know I'll never have anything like the financial security my parents do (and they aren't rich, just middle-class with a home and some investments.)

I have some friends my age who are homeowners, but it's mostly because 1) They have some inherited wealth or trust fund; 2) They're married couples, which is much easier to do than on a single person's income like mine, and 2) they were willing to buy and live in neighborhoods that were legitimately terrifying 20 years ago.

I have ALL sympathy for Millennials, because as shaky and weird as our path has been, theirs has been much much worse. And the cause is the same. WAGE THEFT.

[Jspur]

19. It's interesting how Gen X was the first generation to be worse off

than their parents starting a trend granted to no fault of their own. The millennials are now worse off than Gen X and pretty soon Gen Z will be worse off than millennials. That is now 3 straight generations that have faced serious decline quite the opposite of the 3 generations that followed the great depression that saw an upward climb economically from each generation to the next in the WW2 Generation, Silent Generation,Boomers. Boomers are really the only generation that keeps the myth of the American Dream alive. Once they are gone that's when things will get real interesting but by then it will be too late for Millennials(I say this as one), Xers, maybe Gen Z will have some time to recover.

[Withywindle]

24. For the last 40 years, since Reagan

Wealth has been directed away from literally every single class of regular people, upwards towards the rich. With each generation, the effects get worse.

[Jspur]

21. Agreed as a fellow millennial

you echoed everything I have been arguing for the last 10 years. I don't think Boomers really understand all the financial pain the millennials are going through. Cost of living like you said has skyrocketed. I'm 37 and my father bought his first house at the age of 36 for 150K. Keep in mind he bought that house on one income while my mom was a stay at home mom. If I wanted to buy that same house today it would cost me over 300K. To me that's fucking ridiculous. Basically I would have to make twice as much as my father at his age to live the same comfortable lifestyle that he lived. Not to say we were rich but we had a comfortable middle class existence. My dad wasn't living paycheck to paycheck.

[appalachiablue]

34. This Boomer understands and regards the system as unfair and cruel, #32

[Sympthsical]

38. You mentioned your friend in another thread

I’m sorry. I saw a few days ago and didn’t reply. Sometimes life takes over.

His breaks are a lot of peoples’ breaks. I know them. I’ve seen them. I’ve narrowly avoided my own.

However, how’s your friend? I’m going to PM you if it’s ok. Your friend’s story is so common, so familiar.

[Jspur]

22. I also think the majority of our generation will not

retire. Very few will have the money to do so and a lot will work until they die or will be homeless when retirement age approaches. Stuff like this is why I don't fear death anymore.

[Solly Mack]

26. K&R

[octoberlib]

30. They should vote then . In every election including

dog catcher.

[appalachiablue]

37. Kick

[brooklynite]

46. Um, don't young people generally have less wealth than older people?

[Bettie]

47. It is an apples to apples comparison:

From the article:

Millennials, who are the median age of 32 today, control just 4.6 percent of U.S. wealth, far behind the 21 percent Boomers had at about that same age a generation before. These working young adults will need to quadruple their bank accounts in the next two years in order to match the financial share controlled by their parents during the late 1980s, when the median Boomer was 34 years old.