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Every so often, we get an outbreak of generational warfare here on HumbleDollar, with the site’s generally older readership decrying the financial habits of younger generations, while proclaiming that things were so much better when they were growing up.
I find this rather silly. As I see it, people don’t fundamentally change from one generation to the next. Meanwhile, we’ve seen extraordinary progress in recent decades, but that’s also meant new challenges. Consider eight points.
1. How good is your recollection of what you were like in your 20s and 30s? No doubt there are HumbleDollar readers who always made wise decisions, financially and otherwise. I wasn’t one of them. I can’t recall all of my mistakes, thank goodness. But what I can recall I’d rather not.
2. Disparaging the generation that follows is a long and not particularly admirable tradition. What did our parents’ generation say about us when we were teenagers and in our 20s? I doubt that they were all that impressed.
3. By countless measures, the world is a better place today. The U.S. standard of living continues to climb, even if the rewards haven’t been spread as evenly as many would like. Meanwhile, we’ve seen huge advances in technology and medicine. Were things really better in the “good old days”? They certainly weren’t for many minorities, women and those in ill-health.
4. Because standards of living rise over time, it’s no surprise subsequent generations spend in ways we never would. Today, lots of folks, it seems, subsist on takeout—a practice I’m inclined to condemn, but don’t, because this sort of “extravagance” is what economic progress looks like.
5. We tend to judge our standard of living by looking at those around us, rather than comparing our lot to the way things were 20 or 30 years ago. The upshot: Even though standards of living climb over time, the portion of the population that feels shortchanged tends to remain the same.
6. Don’t assume subsequent generations “have it easy.” Even as standards of living have improved, things have also gotten tougher in some respects. Do you have any idea how competitive it’s become to get into good colleges and to get a good job? I got into Cambridge University by the skin of my teeth. If you saw my middling grades on the entrance exam, you’d know that isn’t false modesty.
Today, I strongly suspect I’d end up elsewhere because I’d be competing against so many talented students who before would never have dreamed of applying to Cambridge—kids from working class backgrounds, minorities, women. For these groups, the world has become a more accepting place, even if barriers still exist. That should be celebrated: In a capitalist economy, the goal is equality of opportunity, which should ultimately benefit all of us.
7. Do you have any sense how unpleasant the work world has become? Employees are monitored closely and evaluated constantly. I’m so grateful to have escaped that sort of overbearing supervision.
To be sure, some of my early bosses behaved in ways that wouldn’t be tolerated today. But the workplace also tended to be a less regimented place. When I arrived at The Wall Street Journal in January 1990, my first editor explained that there was a four-day work cycle. I’d write an article every three days, and then I was allowed an “FU” day before starting on my next piece. Can you imagine a boss saying that today?
8. If there’s something we don’t like about today’s society, who’s responsible? Today’s world was created not by those in their 20s and 30s, but rather those age 40 and up. Who’s to blame for the aspects of today’s society that we don’t like? Perhaps we should be looking in the mirror.
This is a comment about the good ol’ days, but from a different perspective. When I got out of the military in 1972 and started working in an administrative, salaried job, the work day began at 8AM, and ended at 4:30PM. There was no easy way for the boss to contact you outside of this time period to get you to work after hours. There was no email or texting until smart phones and faster internet connections for PCs became commonplace. Okay, I might have a project I needed to work on at home, but it was my choice as to when I did the work, and there was no boss looking at the project until it was finished because there was no way to share. Nowadays, in the US, there is no time when you can escape work. The EU has even passed laws to keep US companies who operate there from texting and emailing employees after hours. In fact, this is, perhaps, why there is such a difference in productivity between the US and Europe.
I wish there was more knowledge about financial and health matters in today’s generation but as Jonathan said we only have ourselves to blame.
Here’s a Greatest Generation complaint for you. My mother, in about 1971, was the mother of 6 with me as the youngest. I was about 10 years old at the time when she said, “The way these kids act today (referring to the baby boomers, hippies, etc.), you’d think they invented sex!” 🙂 It wasn’t until years later that I saw the humor in that, however, at that time, she was serious. It was her way of expressing disgust at the so called sexual revolution going on at the time.
Like anything else, there are areas where things are better, and areas where I think they have declined. Jonathan touched on a number of the positive developments, such as tech, healthcare, and life, in general, for women and minorities. All of which have had enormous impact.
However, some things have moved in a negative direction: The decline of the nuclear family, the failure of the public schools to improve educational outcomes despite huge investments of capital, the (apparent) increase in the obesity rate among young people, and the over-reliance on technology to the deteriment of developing social skills. Technology is a HUGE two-edged sword for younger generations.
P.S. I realize I’m slightly off topic in that all of these don’t address, per se, the financial habits of generations. I hope you’ll indulge me all the same.
Is the nuclear family really such a good thing? It’s a closed environment in which abuse can occur unseen. It also has fewer people to share the work.
I’ve read that social scientists have found that children growing up in a household where both biological parents are present, generally do better in life than those growing up in a single parent household.
Most of us develop our basic moral sense from our parents. Often, children from single parent homes learn basic life lessons from street culture since a single parent is often working and missing from a child’s life.
If abuse can occur in a nuclear family, imagine what must occur in its absence. If a child is not protected by a nuclear family, who has the responsibility to protect and teach that child? Government bureaucrats? Street gangs? What moral lessons will they teach?
I was thinking of multi-generational households, but please provide evidence that a single parent is a worse parent than an abusive parent.