It is the privilege of the young to blame their specific challenges on their elders, but who actually does worse depends on what you count, and how you count it.
Many if not most Gen Xers were raised by thr Silent Generation or older boomers. Those are parents that had properties and investments tk pass on to us when they die. My friends parents are now dying or about to and we are inheriting properties and wealth of our parents. Boomers are now having to spend a huge portion of their wealth on elder care and eventually nursing homes and they are dipping into their wealth and selling the homes they bought for a dime in the 70s and 80s for a lot of money thay goes into that care that will not being going to their millenial kids.
A big advantage later generations have over GenX at the same age is the internet, particularly the edge it gives in job-hunting.
Also graduated in mid-90s recession, and NO ONE was hiring. I'd buy an Ottawa citizen and Ottawa Sun in the morning and check the classifieds for something to apply to. If there was one job that fit, I applied to one job that day. If none, than none. Other cities and regions? Forget about it. Apparently the job market in Calgary & the West was booming at that time, but if you didn't have family or someone you knew there then you had no clue it was booming. A city two hours away could be booming and you'd never know. With no internet, job leads came from your local paper and people you knew.
A real go-getting or desperate GenX'r back then would go to malls or the Market (restaurant&bar district in Ottawa) hoping to spot a Help Wanted sign, or even go into random businesses and ask if they were hiring. Tiring and futile for the most part, but I actually got part-time work that way one time.
Now a 20something can apply to as many jobs as they've got time to, and scoping the job market of other cities or even countries is a breeze.
This is super interesting. One aspect I didn't get into, sort of left unsaid, was that housing isn't everything, and there are a lot of different ways life is a lot better for milliennials. This is part of it.
This cuts both ways: it is much easier to apply for jobs and so employers are inundated with applications. This results in intense competition for positions, because you're competing against everyone with internet access and a given skillset. The rise of "anywheres" extends the competition for jobs across international borders. The whole process has become hyper optimized. You can apply for a hundred jobs and receive a hundred rejections in a week, if the employer even issues rejection letters (many don't).
An addendum to the last poster: I’m in the Millennial generational category having been born in ‘84 and just being on the cusp of my forties, and I bore witness to quite possibly the most revolutionary bounds in technology being as I juuuuuust remember life before the internet, and they’re right: the internet conferred advancements in communication that I find we, as a generation, may have become anesthetized to and take for granted.
But I wanted to also add that there are countless variables to consider to factor in as well, the two of which I’m interested in being geography and demographic. For context, I was raised in rural Newfoundland during and after the moratorium, so we witnessed relative privation if you compare the experience to those in mainland urban settings (and the differences will never be so blatant as when you go from the former to the latter, because you can’t just shed that old value system).
In this case, demographics matter. Broadly, I’m personally subject to the same vicissitudes in the economy as my age cohort. However, as a result of my upbringing, my value system is totally different in many ways. For instance, I don’t watch television, I can negotiate doing with less, and I have a work ethic forged from having to do work from a young age, and I can be flexible and resourceful across different labour markets. As a result, my personal experience is not going to be the same as those who are predilected toward being used to middle-class living.
I want to stress that this is all anecdotal, so don’t take any of this as cardinal. But it does throw into question how urgent these financial difficulties may seem. I’m don’t feel like I’m doing without if I don’t have television and video games, so as an expenditure, it’s moot with me. The value is relative, and if the demand is zero, I’m less constrained and more free to put monetary resources elsewhere (such as buying Mr. Potter’s book, which I only just found out about by clicking the link).
And I think it’s important to remember how many of these grievances one can chalk up to garden-variety confirmation bias. As one poster said, Generation X laboured under a fog of knowledge compared to us, which is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, we have access to knowledge as yet unexplored. On the other, we have instantaneous vectors for bad information, exacerbating the potential for moral panic.
So it’s all very sticky. It’s hard to know what the real scoop is because there’s only so many variables that can be realistically explored. Statistics are a good indicator as far as material is concerned, but as long as many variables affect value, it almost seems like all bets are off.
There was some guy (citation needed) that said Canadians in particular have way too much of our “wealth” tied up in an over heated housing market. Essentially that grown ups invest in innovation and productivity while many of us have got paper rich off real estate prices divorced from reality. Which prices new entrants out, and essentially rewards speculation.
And while air bnb unfortunately can’t be blamed for everything, every time I see someone in a tent I think of every airbnb I’ve ever been in. Like who let the tech bros decide that every street was zoned for hotels…. Keep it up Doctor P!
I dunno, man. Twenty-five years ago, I thought the market was a scam (I mean, really it pretty much is, right?) and that we would all be casting off the yokes of our financial overlords, but now I am like, "dang - if I had invested back then, I would be way closer to retirement than I am now." On paper I'll have a pretty nice pension in another 18 years. <knock wood>
Many if not most Gen Xers were raised by thr Silent Generation or older boomers. Those are parents that had properties and investments tk pass on to us when they die. My friends parents are now dying or about to and we are inheriting properties and wealth of our parents. Boomers are now having to spend a huge portion of their wealth on elder care and eventually nursing homes and they are dipping into their wealth and selling the homes they bought for a dime in the 70s and 80s for a lot of money thay goes into that care that will not being going to their millenial kids.
A big advantage later generations have over GenX at the same age is the internet, particularly the edge it gives in job-hunting.
Also graduated in mid-90s recession, and NO ONE was hiring. I'd buy an Ottawa citizen and Ottawa Sun in the morning and check the classifieds for something to apply to. If there was one job that fit, I applied to one job that day. If none, than none. Other cities and regions? Forget about it. Apparently the job market in Calgary & the West was booming at that time, but if you didn't have family or someone you knew there then you had no clue it was booming. A city two hours away could be booming and you'd never know. With no internet, job leads came from your local paper and people you knew.
A real go-getting or desperate GenX'r back then would go to malls or the Market (restaurant&bar district in Ottawa) hoping to spot a Help Wanted sign, or even go into random businesses and ask if they were hiring. Tiring and futile for the most part, but I actually got part-time work that way one time.
Now a 20something can apply to as many jobs as they've got time to, and scoping the job market of other cities or even countries is a breeze.
This is super interesting. One aspect I didn't get into, sort of left unsaid, was that housing isn't everything, and there are a lot of different ways life is a lot better for milliennials. This is part of it.
This cuts both ways: it is much easier to apply for jobs and so employers are inundated with applications. This results in intense competition for positions, because you're competing against everyone with internet access and a given skillset. The rise of "anywheres" extends the competition for jobs across international borders. The whole process has become hyper optimized. You can apply for a hundred jobs and receive a hundred rejections in a week, if the employer even issues rejection letters (many don't).
An addendum to the last poster: I’m in the Millennial generational category having been born in ‘84 and just being on the cusp of my forties, and I bore witness to quite possibly the most revolutionary bounds in technology being as I juuuuuust remember life before the internet, and they’re right: the internet conferred advancements in communication that I find we, as a generation, may have become anesthetized to and take for granted.
But I wanted to also add that there are countless variables to consider to factor in as well, the two of which I’m interested in being geography and demographic. For context, I was raised in rural Newfoundland during and after the moratorium, so we witnessed relative privation if you compare the experience to those in mainland urban settings (and the differences will never be so blatant as when you go from the former to the latter, because you can’t just shed that old value system).
In this case, demographics matter. Broadly, I’m personally subject to the same vicissitudes in the economy as my age cohort. However, as a result of my upbringing, my value system is totally different in many ways. For instance, I don’t watch television, I can negotiate doing with less, and I have a work ethic forged from having to do work from a young age, and I can be flexible and resourceful across different labour markets. As a result, my personal experience is not going to be the same as those who are predilected toward being used to middle-class living.
I want to stress that this is all anecdotal, so don’t take any of this as cardinal. But it does throw into question how urgent these financial difficulties may seem. I’m don’t feel like I’m doing without if I don’t have television and video games, so as an expenditure, it’s moot with me. The value is relative, and if the demand is zero, I’m less constrained and more free to put monetary resources elsewhere (such as buying Mr. Potter’s book, which I only just found out about by clicking the link).
And I think it’s important to remember how many of these grievances one can chalk up to garden-variety confirmation bias. As one poster said, Generation X laboured under a fog of knowledge compared to us, which is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, we have access to knowledge as yet unexplored. On the other, we have instantaneous vectors for bad information, exacerbating the potential for moral panic.
So it’s all very sticky. It’s hard to know what the real scoop is because there’s only so many variables that can be realistically explored. Statistics are a good indicator as far as material is concerned, but as long as many variables affect value, it almost seems like all bets are off.
There was some guy (citation needed) that said Canadians in particular have way too much of our “wealth” tied up in an over heated housing market. Essentially that grown ups invest in innovation and productivity while many of us have got paper rich off real estate prices divorced from reality. Which prices new entrants out, and essentially rewards speculation.
And while air bnb unfortunately can’t be blamed for everything, every time I see someone in a tent I think of every airbnb I’ve ever been in. Like who let the tech bros decide that every street was zoned for hotels…. Keep it up Doctor P!
I dunno, man. Twenty-five years ago, I thought the market was a scam (I mean, really it pretty much is, right?) and that we would all be casting off the yokes of our financial overlords, but now I am like, "dang - if I had invested back then, I would be way closer to retirement than I am now." On paper I'll have a pretty nice pension in another 18 years. <knock wood>