| Is the USAs debt really “crippling”? It’s enormous and looks dangerous on a graph, but if the country wanted to, it could pay it off in a couple of hard years considering it’s “only” around 100% of its GDP. Hardly crippling in any real economic sense when you zoom out to the nationwide macro level. Are millennials less productive than previous generations? In my country, we sure aren’t. We’re building more things and we’re building them faster, more efficient and with higher profits than ever before. Not just “creator” businesses, in my city alone we have torn down and build new buildings at such a pace that the previous two years of covid alone have seen more “work building houses” jobs (sorry my English isn’t up to task, construction jobs?” than we did in the entirety of the 80-90’s combined… take that gen X! (Or something). A lot of millennials went and got themselves a higher education in my country. Probably even more so than in the USA because in Denmark you can get any university degree you qualify for while being paid to study, since we handle that stuff collectively and through taxes to give everyone equal opportunity. Has the fact that we too scorned craftsmanship professions throughout the 90ies and 00s has a negative impact? Sure. Are millennials who went to university migrating to become plumbers; electricians and so on? Absolutely. The real difference between my millennial generation and my parents generation is what we are paid for our efforts. I work a high paying job, I work a second job as an external examiner for CS students which twice-four times a year pays me an extra months worth of my primary job as salary. Yet to see the same wealth increase my parents saw from simply owning a house, I’ll need to do some hardcore investment and saving, or hope that real estate continues rising (which it won’t). My parents saw their house increase from 200k to 4 million Danish KR. I do own my own apartment, and it is in an area that’s fairly sure to increase in value, but to see the same increase, it would need to go from 3 million to around 50 million. Adjusting for inflation, a realistic estimate will be that I can sell it for maybe 6 million if I’m lucky. So despite being more productive, more efficient and more financially great for the over all economy, I will benefit less than my parents did. Not only that, but they got to retire at 60, I currently get to do so at 73 unless I pay for all of the pre-73 years myself. Should you loathe your own generation like the author does? Fuck no. Try to understand them instead and you may just realise why people are fed up with wages that haven’t increased without getting eaten by inflation for 30 some years. I’m lucky enough that I can chose and pick where I work, I can’t image how not being able to do so as a millennial or below must frustrate. |
https://www.thebalance.com/interest-on-the-national-debt-411...