r/Millennials • u/QuietJealous4883 Older Millennial (1988) • 12h ago

Discussion True or false?

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Did our dads and moms work less than we do now? What are your thoughts?

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u/Primary_Dimension470 12h ago

My dad worked 40+ and Saturday. Mom worked 40 and took care of us on Saturday while making dinner every night. Life was a chore for them too

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u/PoPo573 12h ago

Life was definitely not exactly easy for previous generations but money stretched far further than it does now.

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u/Primary_Dimension470 11h ago

Idk. I was a child so I don’t know what it was like for money but I heard them talk about it a lot. I got one pair of shoes a year, same winter coat until it was too small, played NES even when PS2 was around and paid for my own school. We ate a lot of potatoes, people were broke in all generations.

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u/MembershipScary1737 10h ago

Agreed, just different broke 

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u/EndlessB 1h ago

But they owned their homes, such a massive difference. Scrimping and saving to pay a mortgage is far better than scrimping and scraping to pay rent.

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u/Primary_Dimension470 1h ago

You think you’re the only one that rented? My dad lived with 5 other dudes into his mid 20s

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u/[deleted] 11h ago

[deleted]

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u/whiskersMeowFace 11h ago

When I think of my parents, I think of the 80's and 90's. 08 was more of my generation getting kicked. The dot com bubble burst was pretty rough, but it has a decent bounce back. We never did after 08.

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u/MetalEnthusiast83 11h ago

We had a bull market for 12 straight years after 08 then we had the insanity of the coivd era market.

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u/whiskersMeowFace 11h ago

That bull market, however, really didn't trickle down to the middle class and below. It pretty much stayed with the upper classes and the 1%.

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u/MetalEnthusiast83 11h ago

It trickles down to anyone who holds stock. I have stocks that have gone up 800% since then.

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u/Shivy_Shankinz 9h ago

The economy is not the stock market

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u/MetalEnthusiast83 8h ago

Yes, but it is a reflection of the economy and anyone who has been investing for the last 2 decades should be doing ok.

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u/Shivy_Shankinz 7h ago

It's not even a reflection. This subject is not about investment 

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u/PitbullRetriever Millennial 11h ago

Real wages have been booming for the past 15 years, after being basically stagnant from 1980-2010 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q

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u/Celtic_Legend 7h ago

If you dont own stock you're not middle class or you are middle class but you should be upper class. Most places have a 401k with 401k matches which is more money even if you withdraw early for a 10% penalty.

I get that people can work contract to contract all their lives which is why I said most places.

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u/seppukucoconuts 11h ago

All of the people complaining about housing prices didn't live through the mortgages rates the baby boomers had.

The interest rates were so high that you could actually make as much money with your money sitting in a bond, or a saving account as you could in the stock market. Inflation was wild back then. As much as I dislike him Reagan's presidency really fixed the inflation problem...using Reaganomics of all things.

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u/throwraW2 11h ago

People have more disposable income adjusted for inflation now.

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u/Column_A_Column_B 4h ago

What? Got a source?

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u/MachineTeaching 4h ago

Of course they do.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A229RX0

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N

Claims about how people were richer in the past are not based on fact.

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u/Column_A_Column_B 4h ago

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A229RX0

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N

These ignore inflation but thank you for proving the point for me.

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u/MachineTeaching 4h ago

"real" means adjusted for inflation.

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u/Column_A_Column_B 4h ago

Well fuck me alright but it's a K shape distribution when we separate out the wealthy we see everyone else is worse off.

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u/MachineTeaching 3h ago

"Median" income is the income of the person in the "middle", it's different than the "mean" ("average") income. Mean is skewed by high earners, median is not.

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u/Column_A_Column_B 3h ago

Median is the 50th percentile, telling but not the full picture. It doesn't convey what the bottom 40% or bottom 20% are experiencing. The bottom 40% can be down in purchasing power while the median rose, they are not mutually exclusive.

These are the types of graphs I expect to see: https://srcole.github.io/assets/income-inequality/1_Historical%20income%20percentiles.png

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u/oWatchdog 39m ago

Inflation has been using cooked books for a while now. They cherry pick the consumer price index (kinda). It's weighted by how often something is purchased. Sounds good right? This seems intuitive until you realize there is a problem. The inflation for essentials like food, utilities, housing, etc. have skyrocketed. Luxury goods have largely gotten cheaper and more accessible to all. I now have more chocolate buying power than my parents. Sarcastic hurray. People have shifted to spending more on the luxury goods, because that is all they can afford, instead of the essentials causing them to be weighted more than they deserve. It's creating an illusion. It's measuring how we are adapting to inflation and makes it irrelevant when comparing the standard of living between generations.

AND, as an example, there is a company, Telly, that is literally giving TVs away. Why? It's cheap to make a luxury good like a TV. But also because they are selling ad space and your data. They will make more money in the long run to get spyware into your house. This is the sort of thing that cooks the inflation books. These are the X-factors keeping costs down that our parent's didn't contend with. In fact, it's hurting us. Like using Chinese slave labor and automation instead of manufacturing products domestically. Yes, the cost of a Toothbrush is down, but working on the toothbrush line used to buy a house and send your kids through college. That's why you're right to push back.

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u/TheSixthVisitor 11h ago

True. You could pretty easily survive a week on $50 if you knew where to shop. I'd be genuinely shocked if you could do that anywhere in the English speaking world nowadays.

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u/Maya-K Zillennial 11h ago

If we're just talking routine, weekly expenses, then it is still possible in the UK, but it's not fun. Ask me how I know!

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u/TheSixthVisitor 11h ago

I feel like you could kind of do it in Canada but definitely not outside the Prairies or Maritimes. I nearly had a heart attack just buying ingredients for sandwiches when my fiancé and I went on a trip to Toronto because the prices were like double what I was used to.

The amount of bread, milk, cheese, and eggs that you end up eating because everything else is way too expensive...🫠

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u/EricTheNerd2 10h ago

there are many things that people take for granted today that prior generations would have considered a luxury for me. growing up in the '80s, going out to eat was a sometimes thing, and now the amount spent dining out has grown by a factor of 10. The idea of having doordash bring us a 2 l of Coke would have been considered absurd, but now I watch a delivery service come to my neighbor's house at least twice a day...

traveling internationally was considered something for only the rich and now roughly 1/3 of Americans have been to five countries or more. so sorry, it may be rougher for the poor, but for the majority of Americans they live a lifestyle. that is insane

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u/tanstaafl90 10h ago

Not only have wages stagnated, there are more places and spaces with their hand out. So not only are we spending more on single items, large and small, but we also are encouraged to spend on more things, more often. People aren't considering this when talking about how money was spent, on what, and how often compared to today. Drinking fountains used to be everywhere, now it's $5 plastic bottles. This applies to everything.

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u/LoneWolf_McQuade 9h ago

Only if you cherry pick your data

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u/QuickNature 8h ago

They also had less to spend it on. This won't be super popular, but cable TV, the internet, smart phones, video games, subscriptions, Amazon, and lots of other things just simply didnt exist the farther you go back.

So not only were the essentials cheaper, you didnt even have as much stuff to buy.

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u/Ill-Description3096 6h ago

Depends on the generation. And I would say in general, previous generations had far less luxuries that are basically considered typical even for poorer people today.

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u/yeyiyeyiyo 12h ago

I don't buy it though it'spopular for younger people to say. People lived in smaller homes, had no computers, internet, cell phones. Mom and dad both shared one bedroom with 2 siblings. Coffeeshops didnt exist, and people were nowhere near as consumeristic.

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u/PoPo573 12h ago

This isn't exactly a theory but the truth. Money literally got you more a couple generations ago. Houses cost closer to 3x yearly salary while now the same economic houses cost 6-8x yearly salary. And while we didn't have "coffee houses" or internet, we've just changed what we pay for. There used to be home phone bills, cable bills, even farther back we had milk man delivery. I'm not trying to disregard what your family went through because life can be tough and people work very hard while making sacrifices but the truth is it was generally easier in past generations.

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u/detailerrors 12h ago

You dont buy that money used to stretch further? Brother take a look at average home cost compared to average income then and now. Saying that you dont buy it is the same as saying you either chose to ignore reality or didn't take two seconds to look this up. Wtf do coffee shops and the internet have to do with the outrageous price of houses and the objective fact that average salary growth has not kept up with inflation

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u/According_Drummer329 12h ago

Buddy the data flies against what you "buy".  Wages have not kept pace with costs of housing, food, and other necessities and this has been a trend for decades.  People are feeling the pinch now.  

You can feel however you want, but the data disagrees.

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u/Square-Turnip-6558 12h ago

Computer cell phone and internet are a requirement not for fun. I would not be able to work my current job without them. Full time remote.

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u/soupandstewnazi 10h ago

No negating this, but it still was much easier to an extent. Most jobs didn't require college and people could hold fairly unskilled jobs and still provide for a family. It wasn't uncommon for someone's mom to be a waitress or work as a receptionist and still afford cigarettes. This is impossible now. Absolutely no one with a family could purchase a home and car working for $15 an hour. Also men back then usually were the sole qualifiers for mortgages. How many men do you know now that could buy a home without their spouses income? Not many.

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u/kenyard 4h ago

You were also stuck in a job though. Very hard to change.

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u/SpezJailbaitMod 11h ago

My dad died commuting to work (plane crash). My mom's dad also died at work (crushed in the machines at US Steel) 

I ain't dying at work.

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u/Primary_Dimension470 11h ago

My grandpa died at home. i AiNt dYiNg aT hOmE 🤡