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from the would-you-like-fries-with-that? dept.
More than half of American millennials, the generation of people born between 1981 and 1996, believe that they will one day be millionaires; one in five think they will get there by the age of 40. These are the findings from a survey conducted in 2018 by TD Ameritrade, a financial-services company.
But a working paper by the Brookings Institution, a think-tank, offers a sobering antidote to this youthful optimism. It finds that millennials are less wealthy than people of a similar age were in any year from 1989 to 2007. The economic crisis of 2008-09 hit millennials particularly hard. Median household wealth in 2016 for 20- to 35-year-olds was about 25% lower than it was for the similar-aged cohort in 2007.
[...] But all is not lost. Millennials are living longer and are the best-educated generation in history. Taken together, this could yet mean that the youngest millennials, who have been less scarred by the crisis, could contribute towards their retirement pots for longer. Then there is mum and dad: even if they don’t become millionaires, millennials will one day inherit from their parents, and that may help redress their relative poverty.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Whoever on Tuesday April 23 2019, @04:03PM (6 children)
This is the biggest lie in American life.
This is the lie that is used to justify not taxing the wealthy: "some day you will be wealthy and you don't want to pay those taxes".
This is a lie that it promulgated by some of the wealthy. It increases wealth concentration amongst the already wealthy.
This is the most pernicious lie because it makes it more difficult to fix the structural problems in society.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 23 2019, @04:41PM
Get frothing red in the face defending it. And not just the republicans you expect, but many moderates/democrats as well.
One of the most curious questions I ask is: Where is all the money going? At the turn of the 20th century no taxes in the US were above.... 1%?
And yet that America had enough money to send a flotilla halfway around the world to perform the 'Opening of Japan', fight the barbary pirates, cause all sorts of chaos in the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean (Mexican American, Spanish American, and other wars, as well as the many 'friendly governments' including the one that lead to the Cuban Revolution.)
Modern America seems to be getting a lot less bang for its buck just on the military spending in comparison to then, and yet the populace is paying how much more in taxes to fund the government? How much better are our services today, adjusting for technological gains? Is the cost and benefit of the manpower greater? Does the average person feel safer? How many people can afford to have a family at home without both partners working?
There is a lot of introspection to be had, a lot of history to be remembered, and a lot of questions to be asked if Americans are going to dig themselves out of this morass they find themselves in. (I personally have given up hope, but would rather my homeland right itself after I have left than never right itself at all.)
(Score: 4, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday April 23 2019, @04:48PM (4 children)
Back in 2002, one of my fellow $96K/yr peons actually quoted that to me as his reason for voting for the Bush agenda...
His wife later ran for and sat on the local schoolboard, after which he came to realize the truth of: "If building a football stadium just keeps one kid every couple of years from getting into trouble with the law, it pays for itself many times over (vs the cost of incarceration alone, nevermind the actual damages the kid might do or money he might make by being productive)"
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2, Insightful) by RedIsNotGreen on Tuesday April 23 2019, @11:01PM (1 child)
But what if you end up owning stock in a company that operates prisons?
There goes your retirement fund!
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday April 24 2019, @12:12AM
Prisons, lawyers, politicians... there are some things that just shouldn't be funded.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Wednesday April 24 2019, @10:50PM (1 child)
I wish they'd make that argument with backing data, and then collect funds voluntarily rather than via taxes to fund the stadium.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday April 25 2019, @01:56AM
They do make that argument with backing data, and in the Houston area there are independent school districts, some of which are very well funded (our property taxes on a $160K house were $5K per year, most of it for schools), and others are poor as dirt, and it shows in the quality of the graduating classes, and every other grade, for that matter.
🌻🌻 [google.com]