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The World Socialist Web Site, publication of record of the ICFI (SEP), on May 24th released a report about the grim situation many millennials face:
The stock market is booming, and President Donald Trump is boasting at every turn that the unemployment rate is lower than it has been in five decades.
However, the working class, the vast majority of the population, is confronting an unprecedented social, economic, health and psychological crisis. The same processes that have produced vast sums of wealth for the ruling elite have left millions of workers on the brink of existence.
Perhaps no segment of the population reflects the devastating consequences of these processes so starkly as the generation of young people deemed the "millennials," those born roughly between the years 1981 and 1996. More than half the 72 million American millennials are now in their 30s, with the oldest turning 38 this year.
A recent exposé by the Wall Street Journal noted that millennials are "in worse financial shape than prior living generations and may not recover." The article, "Millennials Near Middle Age in Crisis," [paywalled] concludes by stating that people born in the 1980s are at risk of becoming "America's Lost generation."
Selected bullet points from the WSWS article:
- Millennials have taken on 300 percent more student debt than their parents' generation. [Source: The College Board, Trends in Student Aid 2013]
- By 2014, 48 percent of workers with bachelor's degrees are employed in jobs for which they're overqualified. [Source: Labor Economist Stephen Rose, published by Urban Institute.]
- The number of workers in the United States participating in the gig economy is expected to triple to 42 million workers by 2020, and 42 percent of those people are likely to be millennials. [Source: Freshbooks]
- Between 1978 and 2017, according to the EPI, CEO compensation rose in the US by 1,070 percent, while the typical worker's compensation over these 39 years rose by a mere 11.2 percent.
- In the 40 years leading up to the recession, rents increased at more than twice the rate of incomes. [Source: Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University.]
- One in 5 millennials say they cannot afford routine healthcare expenses. Many of these millennials are uninsured because of the cost. An additional 26 percent say they can afford routine health-care costs, but only with difficulty. [Source: Harris Poll]
- Men and women in their thirties are marrying at rates below every other generation on record. [Source: The Atlantic, "The Death (and Life) of Marriage in America"]
- It is predicted that most millennials will not be able to retire until age 75. [Source: NerdWallet analysis of federal data]
The report concludes, "Far from becoming the 'Lost Generation' predicted by the Wall Street Journal, this generation of workers carries within it an enormous source of revolutionary potential."
[Ed. Note. I debated whether or not to run this story given the partisan source for the article, but the list of references suggested it was more than a simple opinion piece. So, are things really as grim as portrayed here? I'm too old to be a millennial, but have both personally experienced as well as witnessed many others facing the same trends listed here. Where do things go from here?]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by stretch611 on Tuesday May 28 2019, @12:48AM (16 children)
You are right,,, It is much more important that mega-corps pay so much to their CEOs and board members that they have more money than they can actually spend in a dozen lifetimes while their rank and file workers can barely afford to feed themselves let alone pay rent and healthcare expenses.
Even when their CEOs fail spectacularly, they leave companies with a golden parachute with a retirement package of millions per year. Even after a disgrace many of them are hired on to the board of a different company for much more than they are worth while still collecting the money from the golden parachute.
And lets face it... The rank and file workers at the local office/store are the people that the customers actually interact with... They can have a larger effect on repeat business than the CEO/board members ever will.
Maybe instead of companies complaining that they can't afford to give proper compensation and benefits to the rank and file, maybe they should eliminate the waste at the top.
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
(Score: 1, Troll) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday May 28 2019, @01:06AM (10 children)
What they pay their C**s isn't really relevant. The job duties and rarity of skillsets aren't remotely comparable.
Only a shareholder (or at least someone considering being a shareholder) is entitled to that beef even if I absolutely agree with it. Coming from an ordinary employee or a disinterested third party it's just boring-assed envy.
You are out of your cotton-pickin mind. A CEO or board member can sink a company or double its profits with one decision. The very rare ability to do the latter more often than the former is why they make and very much deserve so much more.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday May 28 2019, @06:01AM (6 children)
So, maybe you can explain what those job duties and skillsets are?
Historically, top CEO's earned about 40x what his workers earned. That seems a lot, but it's about what almost everyone agreed that the top jobs were actually worth.
What, exactly, do today's CEO's offer, that is worth 100x to 10,000x what their fathers and grandfathers earned?
Sorry Buzzard, but few of those top tier executives are worth even a fraction of what they are paid. They are most certainly not worthy of those golden parachutes that guarantee that they will be rewarded with half a billion dollars, even after they drive their company into the ground.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday May 28 2019, @10:06AM (5 children)
Okay, I will. They make the important decisions that decide the future of a business. They look around, say this is important, that's a fucking stupid idea, and people are going to pay through the nose for this if we make it. If that doesn't sound hard to you then let me ask you: why aren't you doing it and pulling in seven figures a year when you do a mediocre job? The answer to that one has nothing to do with who you know.
When you don't even know why they can command the compensation they do, you really have no business having an opinion on the matter, man.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday May 28 2019, @11:08AM
Really? So, what's this whole "networking" thing we hear continuously from college grads? Sorry, that is an outright falsehood. In fact, I'll go further - it has everything to do with who you know, as well as who you blow.
I hate to disillusion you, TMB, but the world does not exactly work strictly as a meritocracy. That doesn't work out in the corporate world, or in politics, in the military, or even in academia.
Let me rephrase the original question: If your grandfather could make the company profitable (in many cases, amazingly profitable) on a salary of hundreds of thousands, why do you need hundreds of millions today? And, at the same time, grandfather paid his employees a sizeable fraction of his own salary, why can we not do the same today?
As for why I'm not sitting behind one of those desks, making millions, maybe it's because I have a soul (despite what some of our SJW's might say).
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday May 28 2019, @04:03PM (2 children)
We need to recall that some of this is due to status signaling and Other Peoples' Money (OPM) too. For example, if a large pension fund wants to show that they care about running the businesses they invest their clients' money in, they can point to the pay they gave to the CEO. It shows they care.
And of course, being OPM, it's no skin off their teeth if the CEO turns out be useless.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 28 2019, @07:46PM (1 child)
I could be wrong about this but I was under the impression that pension funds were fiduciarily separated from the businesses that they serve. Go ahead and educate me if I'm wrong.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday May 29 2019, @01:24PM
Pension funds don't just sit on money. They invest it. When they do so with most stock shares, they get a vote (often a very large one) on the leadership and policies of that company. Those businesses are what I was referring to.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 28 2019, @07:40PM
Frankly, it looks to me like your average Fortune 500 CEO isn't any better at spotting future trends then a small gaggle of teenagers. So, again, why do you think CEOs are worth their over-sized compensation packages?
Mostly because the vast majority of us don't have the resources of a Fortune 500 company at our disposal. You were saying?
(Score: 4, Touché) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday May 28 2019, @08:07AM (2 children)
Shit, man, when even Runaway is telling you you're full of it, You Have A Problem (TM).
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 3, Troll) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday May 28 2019, @10:14AM (1 child)
Ain't my problem. I don't mind most of the world not knowing what the fuck they're talking about. I mean, if they did know what the fuck they were talking about, they'd be running a business themselves and making those fat dollars they bitch so much about instead of punching a clock. Or possibly not. Most people are terrified of all the risk involved when the buck stops with them. They'd rather have the security of a regular check and leave the decisions and responsibility to $someone_else. And then bitch about how $someone_else is making more than them.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 29 2019, @12:01PM
But it's not bitching about how someone earns more than them. It's bitching about how *much* more someone earns than them.
I recognize that the people above me should earn more than me. They deal with things I don't want to, which I find more stressful. So let them earn twice my salary. Or heck, even five times my salary.
But 100 times? Give me a break.
This is the discussion.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday May 28 2019, @02:13PM (4 children)
Sounds like you don't like that. So why make the problem worse?
No reason to, when you got rid of the competition for those workers!
Once again, when you make something, like employment, more expensive, you get less of it. You're describing the symptoms above. Similarly, when you erect barriers to entry, you get oligopolies and cartels just like the megacorps TMB described.
br. After all, we have decades of evidence showing that this is how labor markets work. When are we going to pay attention?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 28 2019, @03:57PM (1 child)
If this were true, corps would have less CxOs as the decades have worn on. It's not supply and demand, it's simply that the people with control over the money decided they wanted more of it.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday May 28 2019, @04:07PM
Looks like demand for CxOs went up instead. But then most labor law isn't a serious obstacle to hiring at that level.
(Score: 2) by stretch611 on Tuesday May 28 2019, @04:14PM (1 child)
Errm... sarcasm... One would hope in certain situations that adding a "/s" to the end isn't needed.
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday May 28 2019, @04:43PM