‘They Are Just Pissed Off’: Scott Galloway Warns Young People Are ‘Opting Out of America’ As Older Generations Failed Them
‘They Are Just Pissed Off’: Scott Galloway Warns Young People Are ‘Opting Out of America’ As Older Generations Failed Them
‘They Are Just Pissed Off’: Scott Galloway Warns Young People Are ‘Opting Out of America’ As Older Generations Failed Them
What is to opt into? It’s barely affordable to live.
It puts the decision on the oppressed because the system is infallible.
Another one of those frustrating segments where they come so close to being right but miss the point entirely by the end. The diagnosis of the issues young people face is on point, but the answer to most of the problems mentioned is not civics courses. It's redistribution of wealth and providing access to housing and social mobility to young people.
There are 38 US companies whose gross yearly revenue is over $100 billion. The collective amount OVER $100 billion is about the same as the US federal budget. No company should make more than $100 billion in revenue - it's a monopolistic action. Tax all corporate revenue over $100 billion. How much is a variable amount based upon federal deficit spending. If the US government overspends $1 trillion then that amount is paid by these too large corporations. That way US politicians are disincentivized to over spend as the largest corporations will lobby strongly to have a balanced budget. If all US companies downsize or split off to reduce revenue to <$100 billion? Awesome, then we have no monopolies and their lobbying powers are therefore greatly diminished.
Revenue is not profit. Costs haven't been taken out yet. This is part of the structural unfairness of personal income tax vs corporate income tax. Companies can write off everything they need to earn money (rent, supplies, wages, utilities) but people can't.
How many companies have $100 million in profit, or more? It's just one: Apple.
https://www.financecharts.com/screener/most-profitable-country-us
They're already under investigation for monopoly practices:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/21/technology/apple-doj-lawsuit-antitrust.html
We have every right to be pissed off. I followed every rule you're supposed to follow. And I'm still worried about retiring in the future. The system is fucking stupid. At my job, every system I implement or touch can be changed. Change is a part of life. But for some fucking reason, this country can't change shit. We just sit in it as everything gets worse while everyone who is struggling continues to struggle even more. The rich get richer. America blows.
If my fiance could work outside the US, we would have left a few years ago.
Why can't they?
Professional certifications don't transfer outside specific countries, and her profession is also very language-oriented so she would have to be absolutely fluent in the language of whatever country we went to. That basically leaves England, New Zealand, or Australia as the only options, and only if she decided to spend months and months doing nothing but studying to pass the boards.
Once we are getting closer to retirement, though, then we will start looking.
Oh I thought it was because they like Trump, are Russian bots, and tankies. At least if people here are to be believed.
America fails it's citizens in myriad ways. I very openly talk about that. I also know for a fact that all the shit you mentioned is absolutely all over Internet social spaces. It's incredibly obvious.
What I see people here talking about most often is income inequality. I'm not sure why you didn't bring that up.
One can simultaneously not like Trump, the US/NATO establishment, the CCP, Putin, Tankies, Republicans™, and Democrats™.
None of these cults and demagogues are friends to ordinary people.
Each successive generation has a higher income even accounting for inflation
The study that graph is from literally says that millenial growth has stalled compared to baby boomer and silent generations:
https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/feds/files/2024007pap.pdf
We confirm that there has been a slowdown in intergenerational progress, except for Millennials who saw their incomes grow slightly faster than Generation X but still more slowly than Baby Boomers and the Silent Generation. Intergenerational progress has remained positive for all generations.
First, we find that the higher household incomes of Millennials relative to Generation X, through their 20s, is a result of dependence on their parents rather than a rise in their own market incomes.
That chart lacks context. The cost of living has drastically increased with each generation as well, far outpacing the increase in wages.
Meaningless chart.
It doesn’t account for things like the median home price in 1950 being ~$7000 vs over $400,000 today. The chart doesn’t show a peak earning increase of 10x between the Silent Generation vs GenX, which seems to have done the best, albeit only briefly. Adjusting the average home price for CPI makes a ‘50s $7k home less than $100k today.
Here's the source for that chart. And the paper for that chart.
The chart is for household income. With each generation, there's an increase in the percentage of the generation living at home. This is noted in the paper, but not in The Economist article. We'll see if Gen Z makes the switch like Millennials were during their 30s.
A couple of asides. The Economist graph isn't very easily matched with one from the paper. There are several graphs that share similar contours, but The Economist has changed the aspect ratio enough that it's hard to identify with visual inspection. Most curious, though, is The Economist's choice of starting the x-axis at 15 years old. All the graphs in the paper start at 20myesrs old.
The conclusion in The Economist piece is as follows:
What does this wealth mean? It can seem as if millennials grew up thinking a job was a privilege, and acted accordingly. They are deferential to bosses and eager to please. Zoomers, by contrast, have grown up believing that a job is basically a right, meaning they have a different attitude to work. Last year Gen Z-ers boasted about “quiet quitting”, where they put in just enough effort not to be fired. Others talk of “bare minimum Monday”. The “girlboss” archetype, who seeks to wrestle corporate control away from domineering men, appeals to millennial women. Gen Z ones are more likely to discuss the idea of being “snail girls”, who take things slowly and prioritise self-care.
It is clear that The Economist has an agenda of dividing Millennials and Gen Z. The paper makes no claims about Gen Z and their economic outlook. The data is simply not there. Rather, The Economist is recapitulating tired themes of "the youth these days" and "kids don't want to work".
People work when they have something to work towards, with and for people they care about. People work hard because it fills us with meaning purpose. When we are young, we do and should be creating relationships and learning about ourselves, the world, who we wish to be in the world, and who we wish to journey with.
I forever will call bullshit on the anti-youth themes of our culture. It dimishes it and serves only the most well established and crumudgenly amongst us. Articles like these have all too obvious subtext of "shut up, work hard, and grow up".
Fuck that noise.
Yeah but it doesn't tell the whole truth, cost of living has been rising steadily as well.
And people can’t afford houses, college, healthcare, etc. because...? Like cool chart, but my generation will literally never be as financially stable as those who came before. I guess it’s fun to pretend we’re better off than we are though.
Imagine paying for college with your income rather than loans.
I wonder what happens to this chart if you remove the top 1% from the calculations. "Median" basically means halfway between the top and bottom... The massive and increasing wealth gap means this graph is basically worthless.
So you are saying that Millenials at their peak now are making as much as Boomers did 20 years ago when houses were about a quarter of the price, and somehow your conclusion is that Millenials are doing great? Or let's look at age vs age: at age 40 a Millenial makes twice as much as a Boomer did at that age, but a Boomer at age 40 could buy a new house in a nice suburb for under $100k when that exact same house is over $300k now.
Yet still workings are still making less than they should.
Okay now do one that shows how much is available after paying for things like rent, food, car, etc.
Meaningless chart
Sure Bud, nice meaningless chart.
In 1960, minimum wage was $1.00/hour and the price of the average US home was $11,000.00
How many minimum wage workers are out there right now looking to buy a new home?
Missing some really important variables, there (inflation, buying power, etc)… while using metrics that present an a deliberately inaccurate picture (median rather than average, and not adjusted for outliers).
Basically, this chart is useless, deceptive propaganda.
And rightly so, for they have been failed. You can't even GO TO SCHOOL without concern that you'll be killed in a mass shooting. This was never a concern for my generation. In 1992, when I graduated, the thought that going to school could be an extinction event for you was not even conceivable. This shouldn't be an ongoing concern for any generation, yet here we are, sending our kids off to school every morning, knowing that there's a slim chance they might not come back.
It's driving me crazy. But when the whole world's gone mad, how can you be sure you're insane?
I graduated in 1997, in a rural town, and I can say that we've knives that caused some injuries and scares and while we did have a kid that brought his dad's handgun to school and threatened people with it, didn't shoot anyone thankfully. This type of shit was around even in the 90's just not around the world and in the 24 hour news like it is now, remember we had Columbine just a few years after we graduated in 1999.
This shit's been bad for a while now.
Most interesting to me is that these pissed off folks think this is something new. I remember feeling this way in 1968. And as you get older and realize you're dying, guess what. You have to go through the stages of grief again.
It’s not surprising, the power structures keep deviating from the will of people in many cases, or use people as useful idiots for keeping assholes in power.
People like Trump have never won a popular vote in the U.S., and don’t win in the U.S. without gerrymandering.
Moreover, the poverty and misery of immigrants is often exploited to create a “beast” class of citizenry that is then used to create disgust and contempt in others, which is the formula being used in Europe. A lot of these power maintaining strategies are expertly crafted by Harvard/MIT/Ivy League educated sociopaths and psychopaths. People deserve better.
fuck that older generation divide to conquer shit.
the ruling class failed us, not our parents generation.
Gen-x'ers have been dealing with this forever. Nothing new.
"It's not just that I have a lot, it's that I have more than everyone else. Forever."
“Just” doing a lot of heavy lifting here
I'm not young, but I feel the same way as these young people. I don't care about this country, I don't care about its people, and I don't care about its future. It's like that Bob Dylan song, "I used to care, but things have changed."