Millennials don’t have it easy

[New Three Talents Compilation First Release] There is a universal tendency for every generation to look at the next one with fear and conclude that the world is doomed. In fact, Plato, a thinker so profound in the 4th century BC, interrupted his philosophical thinking to wonder what was wrong with young people in Greek society. According to The Guardian, he was heard saying: "They have no respect for their elders. They do not obey their parents. They ignore the law. They riot in the streets and are full of crazy ideas. Their morals are declining. What will happen to them?"

Plato’s most famous student, Aristotle, offered a similarly pessimistic view of youth: “Young people have lofty ideas, because they have not yet been overcome by life, and have not learned its necessary limitations; besides, their hopeful nature leads them to think themselves capable of great things. They always prefer to do what is noble rather than what is useful: their lives are governed more by moral sentiment than by reason—all their errors are in the direction of excess and vehemence. They do everything too much—they love too much, they hate too much, and the same with everything else.”

Neither Plato nor Aristotle would have been very empathetic camp counselors. But these passages highlight how each generation views the next as a slow-motion train wreck, while conveniently ignoring the fact that the previous generation is largely responsible for the conditions faced by the next generation, which in turn influences the next generation’s behavior and the way it copes with the struggles of everyday life.

Perhaps no generation has received as much derision in recent times as the millennials, a group made up of people born between 1981 and 1996 and currently aged between 28 and 43. Not only have they become adults during a period marred by enormous economic upheavals, but they have also repeatedly been the victims of unprecedented mismanagement of the U.S. financial system by political leaders who believed the country could borrow indefinitely with no ill effects.

Previous generations, including the baby boomers, born between 1946 and 1964, and to a lesser extent the Gen Xers, born between 1965 and 1980, were able to enjoy a lifestyle full of typical middle-class status markers, such as their own homes and cars.

Unfortunately, over the past few decades, policymakers have added nearly $30 trillion in debt—raising the national debt from $5.2 trillion in 1996 to $34.5 trillion in 2024—thus stimulating the economy (and the prices of nearly everything) and bringing a wave of inflation that has put the coveted middle-class lifestyle out of reach for most millennials.

The cost of living (as measured by the Consumer Price Index) has increased by at least 50% since the turn of the century, far outstripping average wage and salary increases for most millennials. Unfortunately, most inflation indices severely underestimate increases in factors such as home prices, which have doubled or even tripled during that period—depending on the particular region of the country.

It has become a cliché for conservative commentators to say that continued government deficits will severely harm “our children and our children’s children.” But the inflationary spiral that has continued to accelerate over the past few years is slowly but surely eroding the ability of millennials to buy a home, or indeed to achieve any sense of economic security that would encourage them to start a family.

The current U.S. birth rate is 1.6 children per couple, below the replacement rate of 2.1 children needed to keep the population stable, according to the World Bank. Widespread economic insecurity may be causing millennials to be reluctant to have children and reproduce, as millions have moved back in with their parents.

Of course, there’s nothing more romantic than trying to conceive a child in your childhood bedroom while hearing your parents’ television blaring through the walls while they bicker with each other over who lost the remote. This return to the family home is a fate that plagues millions of millennials who simply can’t afford to buy their own home, or even a decent apartment.

The situation isn’t helped by the fact that during the first decade of Millennials’ working lives, the U.S. economy grew at about half the rate it did when Generation X and Baby Boomers entered the workforce, according to economist Gray Kimbrough.

Millennials also suffered through the recession at the beginning of the millennium (the bursting of the so-called Internet bubble), the Great Recession a few years later (which almost led to the collapse of the entire global banking system), and then the COVID-19 pandemic (which caused the worst contraction in economic activity in the United States since the Great Depression).

All of these events have wreaked havoc on the careers of millennials, who are trying their best to climb the corporate ladder even though the world seems to be against them.

Millennials are also forced to take on huge student loan burdens to pay for their undergraduate education and, in many cases, graduate and professional education. Over the past 20 years, the cost of higher education has outpaced everything else, with tuition and fees increasing 132% at private state universities, 127% at public state universities for out-of-state tuition and fees, and 158% at public state universities for in-state tuition and fees, according to U.S. News & World Report.

As a result, few millennials were able to complete college and career education without incurring massive debt—a burden that continues to fuel their financial insecurity to this day.

Jefferson Honey Weaver is a Florida-based transactional attorney who earned his undergraduate degrees in economics and political science from the University of North Carolina and his JD and PhD in international relations from Columbia University.

(Author: Jefferson Weaver)

(Source: Newsmax website)

(Compiled by Wang Jijun)

(Editor: Jiang Qiming)

(Source: New Sancai Compilation and First Release)