12-02-2018, 02:17 AM
(12-01-2018, 03:55 PM)AarG Wrote: Working with a number of Millennials has been interesting, as I saw a lot of the same patterns in their early post-education years that I saw in my own, twenty years before in the first "Bush" recession of the late '80's and early '90's - long stints in temping and retail, while trying to break into more stable work, only to see whole industries collapse when the banks finally faced the truth, and big delays in household formation and declines in home ownership. Over the holiday, I was reminiscing with my brother-in-law about the crazy days of '91 and '92, when several local banks (well, there were only three left in the area - the S&L crisis hit us REALLY hard) stopped issuing 30-year mortgages on local residential real estate, as they were "unable to make money" on a 12% APR loan. The area is still suffering the cascade effects of that bit of short-sightedness, as the region around it has embraced (or at least tolerated) in-migration.
Banks and thrifts were long prohibited from paying market interest rates to savers. The idea was that one saved so that one would have a good relationship with the lender if one borrowed for any reason. Then came the wacky inflation of the 1970s complete with high interest rates that stayed until well into the 1980s.
Then came the consolidation (a euphemism for monopolization) of banks.
...but back to the cause for low levels of consumer spending by the Millennial generation: they have been severely underpaid, and they are paying the all-time real highest rents if they are where the jobs are. Rent is cheap in places like Detroit and Cleveland that people have largely abandoned, but if one wants to be where the jobs are one is in high-rent cities. Where the economy is vibrant, America is a landlord's paradise. The silent were paying modest rents and saving heavily for down payments. Millennial adults are simply paying rent.
Quote:As Strauss and Howe pointed out to Tony Robbins when he interviewed them for his Power Talk(!) CD series, Gen X was only slightly smaller than the Boom, but had much less money to spend, and I'd add, no good options for cutting back. Many of the ways Millennials save today (ride sharing, cord-cutting, and Internet shopping) weren't available to X-ers, so, as the study points out, we have more individual debt that Millennials.
America underwent the rough ride in real estate lending for about 40 years... and look where we are now.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.
