Just how badly are millennials being screwed out of wealth? Let’s take a look at the data.
The Federal Reserve regularly publishes data on the generational gaps in wealth. The boomers have plenty of it, and millennials don’t. That’s no surprise — the boomers are older. But what recent data also clearly shows is that when the boomers were millennials’ age, they had significantly more than millennials do today.
Back in 1989, when boomers were between 25 and 43, they already owned 20.9% of the country’s wealth, according to data from the Federal Reserve updated earlier this month. In 2019, millennials are between 23 and 38, and they currently own a whopping 3.2% of wealth. That means boomers had more than six times as much wealth in 1989 as millennials do now.
“I definitely think millennials have a bunch to be uniquely annoyed about,” said Josh Bivens, research director at the Economic Policy Institute. “Lots of them graduated into a horrible labor market, and they’ve probably been very stunted in their ability to get on the treadmill of earning enough to actually save anything.”
Looking at wealth over time, any given generation would start out with nothing. (Children don’t own stuff.) As time passes, they’d accumulate wealth, and, eventually, people die and tend to pass their wealth on as inheritance.
But the olds’ wealth isn’t trickling down — in 2019, the generations older than the boomers still controlled nearly a quarter of U.S. wealth.
And the inequality isn’t going unnoticed to millennials and the even younger Gen Z. There’s a fair bit of resentment in the air right now — take “ok boomer” as evidence, the dismissive retort the youngs levy against the olds, and the the olds take it personally.
Political candidates know that to effectively reach a millennial audience, they need to be speaking their language. That means tackling inequality, relieving student debt, and promising affordable healthcare — which all of the major Democratic presidential candidates have put forward plans to do.
“I definitely think millennials have a bunch to be uniquely annoyed about.”
Sen. Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign, who has stridently advocated aggressively taxing the wealthiest 1%, has more support among millennials than any other candidate. Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Pete Buttigieg, who likes to point out that he’s “the youngest guy on the stage” at debates, both have big plans to relieve student debt.
Some candidates are even directly pandering to young voters, with videos like Sen. Kamala Harris’ “mood mix.”
No matter how embarrassing their youth outreach, the Democratic party has the millennial vote by a wide margin: The generaton voted Democrat by 35 points in 2018.
Still, it’s worth noting that it’s less that boomers, as a generation, had significantly more wealth than millennials do: It’s more that a tiny fraction of the boomers have always been wealthy and have only gotten richer.
Back in 1989, the bottom half of the country, regardless of age, only had about 4% of the country’s wealth. Since then, the top 1% has gotten richer, the top 10% has held onto its share of wealth, and everyone else got poorer. Now, boomers have 18 times as much wealth as millennials do, according to Fed data.
“The boomer generation had a lot more wealth at this point in their life cycle,” Bivens said. “But it wasn’t the typical boomer — it was that small slice of very, very rich ones, and that’s where we should aim most of our side-eye.”
All other things being equal, generations are defined somewhat arbitrarily, and not all of them are of equal size. Boomers were born during a 19-year period, between 1946 and 1964; millennials were born in a 16-year span, between 1981 and 1996. So it wouldn’t be unusual for millennials to have somewhat less wealth than the boomers.
But that boomers had so much more wealth when they were young than millennials have now means there are broader economic factors at play.
The generational wealth gap has been trending toward young people having less for the last 30 years, the Fed’s data shows. But even Gen X, that little generation between millennials and boomers that will never be president and loved Nirvana cassette tapes, was better off. In 2001, when they were between 22 and 36, Gen Xers had 5.7% of the country’s wealth, nearly twice millennials’ share in 2019, even though Gen X is markedly smaller than the millennial generation.
Young people know they’ve been screwed, and, increasingly, they’re not holding back on yelling at the olds about it. Undeterred that the olds don’t like having the phrase “ok boomer” leveled at them, they’re using it slander those politicians who aren’t taking their concerns seriously.
It is my sincere desire to provide readers of this site with the best unbiased information available, and a forum where it can be discussed openly, as our Founders intended. But it is not easy nor inexpensive to do so, especially when those who wish to prevent us from making the truth known, attack us without mercy on all fronts on a daily basis. So each time you visit the site, I would ask that you consider the value that you receive and have received from The Burning Platform and the community of which you are a vital part. I can't do it all alone, and I need your help and support to keep it alive. Please consider contributing an amount commensurate to the value that you receive from this site and community, or even by becoming a sustaining supporter through periodic contributions. [Burning Platform LLC - PO Box 1520 Kulpsville, PA 19443] or Paypal
-----------------------------------------------------
To donate via Stripe, click here.
-----------------------------------------------------
Use promo code ILMF2, and save up to 66% on all MyPillow purchases. (The Burning Platform benefits when you use this promo code.)
Calling all white people racist didn’t work out too well for the libs. Calling anyone born between 1946 and 1964 greedy will work out about as well. Keep it up with the “OK boomer” comments, but don’t confuse people’s silence with agreement or think that name-calling is convincing them. Their silence is their resolve.
Idiocy. Genx ers like myself also had a terrible labor market. But we left our parents homes. We walked and applied and got jobs. We didnt feel entitled. We settled for less. We worked. We earned. We didnt have all the luxuries millenials have. Shit, i didnt have cable tv until i was 30. I didnt go out to eat a meal until i was in my mid twenties. Millenials are spoiled entitled brats, with nothing but ok boomer as an argument. Lazy ignorant and entitled overeducated idiots.
Agree wholeheartedly. The one thing Silents, GIs, Boomers, and X can all agree on: Mills are complete wastes of entitled flesh who will suffer justifiably and miserably where we’re headed. Their perfectly manicured beards and faux plaid will serve as wonderful Boerboel lunch.
“Overeducated” . Surely you jest. Education denotes something useful. Homosexual aesthetics of post modernistic political science is not useful.
Exactly what i mean by overeducated. Just because you learn something doesnt make that information useful, vsluable, or true.
This is a Vice article….liberal PC bullcrap written to promote the agenda. Surprised they didn’t single out and bash White boomers specifically.
White male Boomers…
We spent hours in college libraries when these youths today get the most complex solved in a you tube video. They have it so easy today that is why they have no work ethics and expect instant wealth gratification.
But have you noticed how frustrated the younger generation when the electronic device does not function fast enough, angrily going this way and that clicking away.
Prof.
Right. I loved those index files. It was a huge adjustment for me to switch to the computer file and finally a PC. Now we have entire college degrees at our fingertips.
You know, I never really thought about it in that context. That’s exactly right. It was painstaking to locate what you needed in a university library, even more so on Microfiche. And it really made you hone your research skills if you didn’t want to be in there all day, competing with other students for the same material. So there was even competition in the library, LOL.
AOC.
And I was never in college, just loved those college libraries for research.
You’re right, we did learn efficient research. You may have noticed my harping on rabbit holes being worthy holes or just energy traps.
I consider myself to be a “first year Boomer”, ’46. What I like to declare as the year “the wholesale bleeding ended and breeding started”. And . . . I’ve been excoriating said generation online for quite sometime as the “I/Me/My” generation to much opprobrium since. Well, so it goes: “like parent[s], like children” possibly? If ya think the “Mills” of said Boomers will not hesitate to pick bones – U B seriously disillusioned, cuz what goes around STILL comes right on around! As a drafted ‘Nam VFW, ’69, and former int’l vagabond/expat for many years; haven’t experienced/seen it all but more than enough to know this “nation-state” is headed for a very serious FUBAR. Considering the current state of such blatant corruption, selective enforcement and turpitude, I’m daily increasingly grateful to be old and, as of this posting . . . “a little closer to Home”. As such, I reprise:
Mark your calendar. Nov 4, 2020 may very well be the commencement of such social/political and financial chaos, ultimately dwarfing what began in 1929.
IF:
1) The DemonRATs & Co rig enough of the election process/ballot tabulation to SEIZE POWER – there will [eventually] be WAR.
2) The Trumpster and conservatives somehow again prevail against all odds, causing the DemonRAT’s Soros-subsidized DummyBrat chump-changers to go bat-schiff crazy – there will [quickly] be WAR.
3) The PRIVATELY-held [NOT]Federal[NO]Reserve’s MOAP – ‘Mother of All [pyramid] Ponzis’ – finally implodes, as all pyramid ponzis eventually do – there will be WAR.
WAR is the ultimate distraction/grifting tool used by the int’l banksters/financial [d]elites to “exit, stage left”/bug out to their remote, undisclosed, well provisioned/secured digs from which they will again proceed to fund ALL the belligerents and . . . then the REBUILD with FIAT DEBT, “FUNDED” into circulation on the “AUTHORized sigs of the pleb borrowers – the coupon/interest portion, of course, remaining UNfunded recycling their next pyramid ponzi and eventual asset xfer.
I still continue to maintain that history will eventually identify the GENESIS of the GreatER Depression to be 2007-08. That the PRIVATELY-held [NOT]Federal[NO]Reserve will “QE to infinity” with its interest-encumbered FIAT DEBT currency/electronic digits “’till the fat lady croaks/the golden goose’s bones get picked clean”. Whenever additional injections of “liquidity” will no longer “cover” the coupons/interest on the burgeoning debt/bonds/paper; calls for physical delivery on precious metal contracts/ETFs go unsettled and the subsequent cascade of derivative defaults occurs, the greatest MOAP – ‘Mother of All Ponzis’ – in recorded history EVER, will implode. Then . . . there will be another big-ass WAR.
yo fellow “fly-over deplorables”: hunkered-down, gathered/grouped, gunned, gardened and . . . SIMPLIFIED on a portion of arable, inland, rural, UNencumbered/UNaddressed county dirt yet, BEFORE those most brutal/toughest remaining of the unprepared, displaced, desperate zombie “citYzens/coasters” “come-a-call’n” and it’s “unlock, fire at will, pass the ammo” time? Tick-tock.
Psst – The “Blessing/Will of the Lord from the Beginning: FELLOWSHIP of the REPENTed/REDEEMed when “two or more GATHER . . .”, What/Who “abides”?
Jai Seli,
Great post buddy!
Yea man, Tick…frigg’in Tock…
Howdy Jai!
Ephesians 3:9 KJB… “And to make all men see what is the fellowship of the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ:”
.
The youth are an entitled pampered lot as a whole. Raised via being driven to school, all the e gadgets provided, no part time jobs, etc. Some were raised right and those are the successful ones. I count my sister’s kids and my kid amongst them. Yeah, we paid for our son’s college at a state school. He paid for his books. He worked since high school at 16. He moved out of the house and shared an apartment with friends with his own income. We gifted him money at his wedding for a down payment on their home. (What parent does not want their kid to have a leg up if they can help them) It enabled him to sell that house and move up into a custom built home with the additional items/upgrades costing more than we paid for our house. I wouldn’t take on that debt but that is reality for their generation.
My wife went to community college while working at McDonalds which enabled her to get an associates in nursing and become an RN. They can’t do that today. It boils down to parents having more children than they can raise economically and not think 20 years ahead. We have never kept up with the Jonses’ and only had one child. I worked my ass off with 12 hour shift work rotating days and nights with 1.5 to 2 hour commutes each way, accepting all the overtime offered. Did I blow it on I wants? No, I invested it into a Roth IRA for him over 5 years (at 60 if the can keeps being kicked down the road he will thank me)
My father told me that I was just a product of his union with my mom. And he wanted me out of his hair as soon as I left high school. I was driven to not have children I couldn’t afford. It seems like lots of millennial parents had yoyo kids, when they left school the parents said you’re on your own after not teaching them the skills to be successful. The story of ignorance and want goes back further than Dickens.
what a load of crap
this would be like those born after the “greatest generation” (get stuffed tom brokaw) blaming the ‘greatest” for not paying attention while the wolves took over the hen house and let the mexicans and muzzies in while the whole place went to hell to the point where people no longer know what bathroom to use or what gender they are and by god every third grader and above knows the intricacies of anal sex
what a shit show
Fuck the millennials, never has a generation had access to so much information than us boomers ever had.
Instead the fucking faggots bury their heads in face book and football and all the other useless distractions. When we boomers try to tell them anything about how they,them and us are getting fucked everyday by the greedy bankers and other.gov.scum.com. they don’t want to hear it.
Rant over, carry on. ..
And yet the damn marketers and corporations destroy this country to pander to them. That’s what really gives me the red ass. These basement dwelling black mold will never be able to afford any meaningful goods or services in this economy, at least not long-term. And yet everything traditional is being destroyed at their behest.
Quarantine them in the cities when SHTF. I’m sure the urban denizens they’ve virtue signaled for so long would welcome them with open arms.
Born in 54 wife in 55 married at 20&19 played slap & tickle for a year and the buckled down bought a starter house 3 years later sold that and built a modest house in a nice area and we were ready to start a family . I had a good steel industry job and she had a lucrative position with an insurance agency . Between 80 & 84 the job market for us blew up in our faces along with millions of other Americans in our boomer age bracket . We struggled we hustled and held on to our home . Finally at 40 & 41 we had a millennial girl . Because of our frugal financial and hard work ethic we paid for private K thru 12 schooling and then for a top nursing degree . All after tax dollars . We deprived ourselves of cars and other goodies to do what we did for our millennial because we love her . We also know how hard things were for us and even bought her a newer car then we had when she went away to college .
What do you bet after having our pensions wiped out in the 80’s our savings devalued in the 90’s and that is still spiraling down today there will be no bail out or college money paid out replaced , $250K would come in handy now !
Our little girl now a well paid professional nurse took us out for a special meal . When the check came she grabbed her moms and my hand and said , I love you guys and I could have never got where I am today without you , she grabbed the check and said this one is on me
“THANKS”
Later that night as my wife and settled down I said paid in full huh ? She said yep with a smile !
We boomers did not make this country the financial mess it is we just had to try to survive in it !
Just another distraction by TPTB. Get the Boomers and Millenials fighting while they watch the show.
We can’t name the real criminals and killers in order to correct the problem. There is only one solution which has been used officially 109 times in history.
You crack me up Flea!
https://biblebelievers.org.au/expelled.htm
When the SHTF I’m shooting all the Flying Monkeys who cross my property line no matter their generation.
I find manicured beards and rolled up designer jeans to be tastier meals for guard dogs.
It’s doubful I’ll be around to hear their surprised howls of indignation when the find out the Fema camps were made for them and not us.
You’ll be around. Spicy time!
Those Hipsters and Progladykes are in for a shock when they get to camp.
You’re doing what with my Organs? You can’t do that!! I’ve got rights! What do you mean, they expired last year?
ha ha ha… it was the boomers doing god’s work.
Flash.
Now that’s funny.
Remember this?
I see an image in my head. All of the asswipes in the top photo with a noose around their neck, standing next to each other on the gallows, ready to meet their fate simultaneously. Just can’t get it out of my head.
Its probably just wishful thinking, but there is a whole school of “thought” that suggests visualization as the key to realization. Good Luck, I may try to take it up.
The only Boomers I know who are rich inherited it.
I’m not whining nor complaining but I drove $500 cars for 20 years. I got a cell phone in my early 40s.
I worked my ass off and paid for my entire education. I did reasonably well and raised 3 kids who are doing well.
That’s the story of the majority of Boomers I know. We worked hard, played by the rules and did OK, no mansions and Country Club memberships.
Your list of acquaintances is very small indeed. Of all the rich folks I know, say with at least a worth of several million, and I know a large number, the vast majority made it themselves. Sure, I know some that inherited, but I know great numbers that are self-made.
Llpoh,
Alot did do it themselves but the majority of those had a leg up to begin with. Daddy was in business, already a professional, good contacts, etc.
Yeah, I grew up in blue collar neighborhoods. No “white shoe boys” around my patch.
Wow, that was a train wreck.
HSF – I was gonna write a reply before reading the comments. Train wreck barely covers that steaming stinking pile of manure.
My kids are milenials. One is making a damn fortune, and the other is saving tens of thousands a year. They got a good start, but instead of complaining and whining, they have worked, planned, and gotten on with things. Same goes for their close friends, almost universally. That said, there are huge numbers from their school cohorts that are worthless as tits on a boar.
The opportunities are there, perhaps maybe even greater than ever before. But waiting for greatness to be thrust upon them is not a strategy that will work. Hard work, thrift, education, family oriented, etc. are the ways forward, now more than ever. Liberal left plans of taking stuff from the productive will end in tears.
Again work ethic matters. I was furious when my oldest daughter dropped out of college after 2 quarters. 5 years later she is now promoted in her job of one year making nearly $80k in logistics because she has a great work ethic. All her friends that graduated with business, accounting etc degrees all owe a minimum of $100k in student debt and many are working at starbucks or Hr Block making $22k year. They are entitled because of that piece of paper and are waiting on the job to fall i to their lap. Meantime they all drive $700 month cars will soon be hitting marriage age or even poppin out kids and then mortgaged. All while in student debt in menial jobs. They will be debt slaves. My son is a junior in college and I told him I would pay in cash as long as he never gets a “C” and majors in one of the 7 designated fields recognized by the federal govt as a professional licensed in a field. He is in mechanical engineering and complains always how hard and rigged the college system is. Both are true. He gets it and happy I pay and holds up his part. Work ethic is the key to success. Nothing else.
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, your children’s success in life is the result of the gifts you and your wife bestowed upon them; the genetic stock of a survivor and the example you two set.
My teenage daughter has been working since she turned 13. She is headed to Europe- like her brother did several years ago- on the money she earned and saved. My youngest son who is 12 just came back from the morning feed run he does with me every day before school and is helping me get ready for the blizzard (I’m inside drinking hot coffee because it is bitter this morning).
You set the bar, reward them when they rise above it, show them through your own efforts what work is really about, something to be joyful and to take pride in and the rest of it falls into place. I could not be any more proud of their achievements if they were my own. That they are wise enough to select friends like them only further increases my admiration. My wife and I will not be around forever, but hopefully the tools we have provided them will not only serve them well the rest of their lives, but remind them of the love and care we provided for them in all the years we were fortunate enough to spend as their parents.
You did a great job- no surprise there- and now you get to reap the rewards of having children go out into the world not with demands and expectations, but with intent and focus, able to take whatever life presents and make something out of it.
Who could ask for more?
I’m just glad my kid mucked horse stalls for a couple years before he got too smart to learn how. It might come in handy if software engineering goes out of fashion.
Credit where it is due… we did a fair to middlin’ job with the young man considering the kind of catastrophe these children witnessed. In my son’s mind there was no “before 9-11.”
It was just some event which caused the war which never ends. He knows his father and I made “good money” to train other people to fight that war.
So do we.
Thanks HSF – I worried I was too hard on them at times, too soft at other times. In the end I guess we got a good balance. That they were selective in their choice of friends is significant – I saw some friends gently discarded, and when I inquired I was told it was because, well, they were not behaving and developing into responsible people, and were not what they were looking for in friends.
Glad your kids are doing so well. No surprise there.
Not if it is all about merchandising and propagandizing an issue.
“Ok, Boomer” sells stuff!
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/29/style/ok-boomer.html
They have is sooo bad but yet they have money for this crap. Cry me a river… and I will dam it up, generate electricity and sell it back to them for all their electric gizmos.
I would say the collapse in generational wealth is inversly proportionate to the rise in the promotion of debt as a primary means of trade. The wealth is gone, its place taken by IOUs (as was well predicted long ago).
The boomer shit is propaganda of the left to create generational warfare.
Knowing that a race war is brewing.
As a Gen X’er i will state work ethics may have a direct correlation to wealth……jus sayin
Because my son likes to make sure his father and I aren’t too blissfully ignorant out here in the sticks, he makes sure we are fully cognizant of the mistakes made by our generation.
He asked me what I thought “Okay, Boomer” means in the language of “his” generation.
I surmised it was similar to telling a senior citizen to go sit down and color at the nursing home. I thought, incorrectly, it was just an insult about our minds not being as quick as they used to be. It isn’t that, exactly, though it is part of it.
He explained it to me. The term, he thinks, refers to the idea that there was an enormous amount of opportunity squandered in the post-World War II “boom.” The “boomers” (um, not you and Dad per se) became overly self-absorbed and materialistic. Boomers were able to make huge financial mistakes and declare bankruptcy to escape them, while his own generation is forced to pay back their student loans even if they die. (This is true; if you co-signed for your child’s student loan and your child dies? You will be paying it back.) So, the Millennials blame Boomers for pushing their own bad decisions onto them* in the form of exorbitant student loans for worthless degrees which taught them nothing.
* This is where it gets a bit convoluted, but I think I see the reasoning: Boomers took advantage of a giant leap in technology, accumulated the wealth and retired early. So, “okay Boomer” is kind of a threat, isn’t it?
There’s a solution to the student loan problem that I have presented previously. One that would work, but which would be painful for both borrower and lender. Thus it will never happen.
My son borrowed for his last semester, which he caused. It has been a good lesson for him to realize how much interest the bank INTENDS for him to pay and claims to be debt free as of the next paycheck. (He moved into a low rent district in KC and I won’t visit him there. But, I did the same thing long ago and far away. He gives his old food to homeless people. It makes him feel better about himself. Moral licensing at work.)
About the most disingenuous piece of drivel I’ve read in a while. It wouldn’t occur to the writer that the Federal Government of the Untied States, through it’s increased regulation, financial plunder, deficit spending, and feckless leadership has completely destroyed the healthy economic landscape this country once enjoyed. To lay it in the lap of a generation of people is, at best, lazy, and at worst, an excuse for butt hurt millennials to latch on to the excuse machine being created by writers like this.
“But what recent data also clearly shows is that when the boomers were millennials’ age, they had significantly more than millennials do today.”
Yeah, they also had significantly more KNOWLEDGE.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/7211952/millennial-cannot-change-light-bulb/
What, isn’t the liberal’s planned divisiveness of convincing blacks that all whites who aren’t on welfare are evil chugging along successfully?
Time to shift some of their Identity Politics carnival toward generational divisiveness. “Yeah, that’s right! The Baby Boomers screwed you out of your rightful inheritance!”
Except that the Boomers didn’t voluntarily take on absurd amounts of student loan debt in order to get advanced degrees in gender studies and the cultural significance of Twinkies in postmodern films.