Post

For reference, Gen X had $80,000, which means that the wealth gap as Boomers got older has grown WORSE, not better. If you want to compare it to older generations, in their 50s, the Silent Generation averaged $495,000 of inflation-adjusted wealth. Baby Boomers had $704,000. Gen-X had $396,000.

The false past is going to drive us to such madness & ruin. Goaded on by fear, we will create such friction & enmity. Always distracting from the class conflict, being preyed upon by megacorps and megarich busy writing the rules. So fallen. These nightmares these foes speak write our dooms.

Lucky man. Mine escaped the pogroms of Russia to get to Britain. My father navigated bombers over Nazi Germany, life expectancy of 3 weeks.

Related: bsky.app/profile/jrow...

Just one catastrophic illness or injury can become an economic landslide for an individual or family. Social and economic mobility can go in different directions, quite suddenly. That is why it is important to preserve an economic safety net and regulate capitalism to protect against predation.

"Nostalgia for a time that never existed is a huge problem." Never used to be!

The thing is, though, it really was easier for GenXers to get started than it is for the current 20-somethings. At least in my area, starting wages for a typical entry-level job have doubled in 30 years, but rents have tripled and health insurance has gone up something like 8x.

A brand new problem has appeared in 2025: Crime

Agreed, but we have to acknowledge that things are much harder now than when I was younger. My ex supported our family on one job, and we bought a house. He made barely above minimum wage. We also had access to healthcare without having huge insurance premiums.

As if that little nepo-baby gives a shit about hardships experienced by his peers. He's never known poverty, he's full of shit like his chameleon mother.

Not high pay jobs. Jobs that provided a living wage coupled with less inflation.

yes but we no longer have a federal government that believes in employing people or paying for things like scientific research. lots of traditionally stable career paths for people with college education have been slammed shut

Well said!

“Middle class prosperity” for my grandparents meant they owned their own house and their kids went to a good school. They did not have high paying jobs (teacher, factory foreman, secretary, insurance agent/ truck driver)

"high wage"+"middle class"? That's a poor wording choice or an intentional oversimplification. Also, if we're getting all dreamy about the manufacturing hey days of the 1950s-70s...understand that all industries had massive layoffs, union building/busting struggles & globalization dawned in the 70s

Not nonsense. Middle class disappeared because Walmart et al don’t pay a living wage.

Honestly I think tech is a big part of it. We spend a lot on it. Yes our parents or grandparents owned a house but they didn't spend so much on all the whistles and bells. People didn't eat out much either. We fritter away alot of money.

I mean.. his blame falls on immigration and his solutions are incoherent.. but that we have large cohorts in the past 20 years who entered crappy job markets (often with massive debt compared to past generations) along with an insane housing market is definitely different than what boomers faced

In the 70's my parents had two cars and their own 4 bedroom house with a very reasonable mortgage, they put 3 of their kids through college, all on a middle class income and my mom mostly staying home except for some temporary jobs as we got older. Its crazy to think this economy is similar.

Also this guy is full of shit he's a rich woman's son he was 100% handed his job that pays well

yeah but we don't need to quote-tweet nazi publicos to make this point

Was there a period in time where homes in desirable regions didn’t cost 10x the median household income, Simon?

People are looking back on economic policies that they liked and wondering why they don't "deserve" similar benefits. Perhaps *your* perception of people's beliefs is simply misinformed. Economic inequality getting worse is not a phantasm.

We went through the great recession immediately into the covid shock. That collective psychosis is crazy.

Having failed at nepotism, he wants to try despotism….

Nostalgia for a time that never existed is exactly what maga is all about. sobrief.com/books/how-fa...

Eh…my parents had me in high school and 2 years later they bought a 4br house near O’Hare off of one factory job. Not sure what world that is not economic security.

There were two moments in my lifetime when the economy was considered strong for an extended period: Mid-80s Reagan boom and late-90s Clinton boom. That's it. Neither lasted more than three years.

you don't strike me as a person who missed many meals

Oh, he's a gross little uneducated Nazi.

I would argue that economic security is one of the reasons for the rise of the far-right. The economy was a critical issue in the decades after the WWII but now that voters feel economically secure, they feel more liberated to vote for their choices without fear of the economic consequences.

People also forget that the rate of injury in manufacturing jobs was considerably higher! And support in the case of injury was much less, and no social security disability in 1950

But people* in the 50s and 60s could afford a house, car, and kids all on one income! *exclusively white men

But what about the economic security of nepo babies? If they're struggling too, we truly have fallen on hard times.

That's for sure!

Very true. My first job out of college in the 70’s was with a bank - I was below the poverty level for the first few years of my career. I worked my way up until I was at 6 figures but it took many years.

Yes this frustrates me too. We were able to get jobs out of college, but we worked our way up, as most people do. Rarely could someone jump right into a job that could afford them a house. Most rented and tried to save our bought a cheap house in a shitty part of town.

It's more that young people with entry level salaries could afford a big city studio apartment or a 2-bedroom share and had minimal co-pays for job-aligned health insurance.

ITT: People who make me ashamed to be a boomer. They're lying, Gen Z and millennials

Nice strawman you got yourself there

Great! Another young man of color who will be told why he’ll never be good enough for radical MAGATS.

God bless any minority that thinks they have a real role in the Republican Party.

Bachelor’s degrees in computing from mediocre universities no longer guaranteeing top-decile salaries straight out of school is treated as a broken promise, and not a correction of an obvious economic anomaly.

as your lawyer I advise you to keep posting this shit

We tend to forget that the boom of the 50s was due to the fact that America was the only major industrialized nation that wasn’t destroyed by WW2. We had massively ramped up manufacturing and were the supplier to the world while they rebuilt.

Nalin Haley is a nepo-douche bag.

The C suite folks sucked up all the money.

This is true. The economy has been in a constant roil throughout the decades and during every generation. Some folks have had it a little worse depending on the year they landed in the workforce. But the ups and severe downs were always there. No generation is inoculated from economic harms.

It’s also a fundamental marker of conservatism (which is why you should be wary of all of the lefties screaming these claims, they’re on their way to flipping)

This is VERY true. Everyone should receive a six figure job and a $400k home upon matriculation. Doesn’t normally work that way (in any era).

I graduated UNC in ‘77. Smack between two opec oil embargoes, two hard recessions, inflation near 9% for years and prime interest rate hitting 18%. Ahhh the good ol’ days

I blame the television. It was a super powerful mass media that had basically one voice for a long time. It provided the illusion that united especially white America, for decades.

A forgotten cohort is late boomers/early GenXers who graduated into the Reagan recession with longterm negative effects. https://www.richmondfed.org/publications/research/econ_focus/2020/q2-3/research_spotlight

This kid's parents have money and he is moaning? What a privileged pos. Someone we don't want in government anymore.

Nostalgia for an Age That Never Existed: great Jello Biafra song, terrible real life phenomenon

And things were not always great for white men who were not wealthy. Think of all the white men who toiled 80+ hours/week in factories or farms untill labor laws were enacted. The 1950s were good because of union representation.

Higher education used to be affordable so people could move on.

Survivor’s bias?

Nepo boy w/fam worth multi millions as voice of working/middle class Gen Z.I’m abt 10 yrs out of uni/job transition but did it simultaneously US/Finland.Salaries close;expectations/fixed cost varied wildly.Housing cheaper.No student loans.Free healthcare.Safety net.Prog tax.Not immigrants,Eco policy

A nice little distraction. The crazy thing is that nowadays you need a high-paying job to meet basic human needs.

I graduated from college during Bush I's recession and took a retail job to pay the bills. This poisoned brat is Nikki Haley 's son. He doesn't have to take a retail job. He just has to complain and be ethnocentric on social media.

At some point it stopped being normal that students make their own wine, and instead started to show up in class w. take away bagel and coffee. And yes, I'm old and grumpy, back in the days I lived in shared flat with drug addicts and my kid has a studio with heat pump in cool district at seventeen

I think the idea that someone working full time shouldn’t have to live with a friend or stranger to afford a place near where they work is pretty reasonable

Full time or gig work?

That 'normal' really coming across as meaning 'perfectly acceptable', when it isn't.

As the young man across the street found out. He started a job with his daddy’s company, hated the Midwest winter, moved down to what looked like a very expensive apartment in a warm spot to work online selling insurance that lasted maybe e two months, he’s back with daddy in the cold.

We need less wealth inequality. It's been less in the past and we were better off comparatively then.

I wasn't trying to do an affordability comparison to today so much as pointing out that economic security in past eras was much worse than some people are imagining. Just to take one example, if you were a woman or if you were something other than white, things really sucked in the 1950s/1960s.

This kid is just like the Latinos who voted for trump in 2024. Their spot is secure and they’re pulling up the ladder to keep out competition. Deplorable

Simon, yes, there was a time when young people were handed high paying jobs. Those legacies coming from Ivy League schools for one. And in the past decade good jobs are secured thru nepotism and cronyism. It is not and has never been an even playing field. Who you know counts more than anything

Ah, the GOP: Where being kind to the help in your mansion makes you a true Man of the People, worthy to lead the nation.

In 1961, my Mom, who was married to my Dad at the time, was fired for being pregnant. She was unable to have her own credit card at the time because she had a vagina & was unable to use birth control without permission from her husband. But sure, things are much tougher now.

I've encountered a lot of people that age who think they're going to start their careers making middle-management salaries.

It may not be as impactful as the other factors mentioned in this thread, but your mom-and-pop employer or landlord cutting you some kind of sweetheart deal—though not guaranteed then, and not unheard of today—was far more likely 40 years ago than it is now.

Okay, but can we just accept this guy is a jerk? For many reasons, not all his fault. But still, a jerk. Does not detract from the reality life is eat what you kill; metaphorically for most.

What's your point? Economic security has fallen, that's not disputable. What is the practical problem you're identifying.

I graduated college in 1979. My first job paid $17,000 a year.

Just spitballing here, but I think Nilal’s misapprehensions go deeper than romanticizing the past.

Housing was cheaper adjusted for inflation, but I honestly think tech is a big part ot it. People had a phone line before and that was it. We pay and pay for tech. It never ends, everything is always being updated

While this is true, the prospect of “student loans you die with” were also less of a thing.

I came of age when Reagan was elected. I remember going to apply for a sales clerk job at Sears and 200 other people had shown up. For 1 job. That was the Reagan economy. The good ole days... I've no idea what they are nostalgic for.

I would rather blame NIMBYs for housing being more expensive rather then claim earlier generations got them easily without problems

my point is it’s undeniable that millennials and later face a much harder economic reality than their parents did. they didn’t just hand out high wage jobs but you didn’t need one to survive. my parents bought a house at 28 on one income, no college. i wasn’t able until 40 w/ 2 (and grad degrees)

“… a fascinating nepo baby, er… young man…”

it's not that people had high paying jobs (this article is stupid) it's that we had a high top marginal tax rate keeping things relatively even for a while, which allowed for a reasonable housing market. Reagan took away all the guardrails keeping business owners in check

There was a time, though, when they were handed jobs (even if low-paying and demanding) that they could then use to prove themselves and move up the ladder rather than sending 1000s of resumes screaming into the void of "apply online."

Bro. One just has to read enough biographies of boomer white men to realize how easy they had it. That said it's no excuse for being a shitty person.

Longing for that great period of American history where young Indian people were handed steady employment

I haven’t read any of the underlined or post, but the OP here seems like a real strawman argument. Normalizing for the usual swings in the economy, the issue is that in the past, there were prospects for each succeeding generation that were better than those for the prior generation.

I bet he doesn't play a role in conservative politics for a long time.

False. Average costs of housing, education, health care, food, and clothes as a fraction of average take home pay? Compared to the 70s and 80s?

I worked as a temp through much of my early 20s. The pay wasn't awful, but obviously there were no benefits.

In the UK, the reason old trad Northern comics did jokes about mothers-in-law is because in the decades after WW2 lots of young couples had to live with parents due to lack of housing due to bomb damage.

And why I ask when was America ever great?? And for whom??

The average home size was 900 sq feet. How many young folks would be ok with that today?