You Are The Poorest Generation (Script & Sources)

Good morning, very bad news: Millennial and Gen Z are the poorest generations in US history - not only do they have less money than any generation before them at their age, by comparison they also have the lowest average wages, exponentially more debt, no financial mobility or retirement options, statistically no savings and for that matter, almost no benefits like healthcare or paid sick leave. While at the same time paying highest rent and child-care costs in history. And nearly all members of both generations have been entering the workforce during the worst economic crises we’ve seen since the Great Depression.

But don’t worry, it gets worse - not only do our generations have no money, we can’t get it because every system of wealth that every generation before us has taken advantage of has been completed closed off to make those previous generations outrageously wealthy.

There’s about 112 trillion dollars in total US wealth - about 70 million baby boomers hold about 60 trillion dollars of it, or 53% coming out to $850,000 on average per person. Roughly the same number of millennials, about 72 million, hold just 4.6%, or about $70,000 each. When baby boomers were our age, they held 21% of the wealth which actually makes sense proportionally and generationally. So why is there such a massive generational wealth gap? 

Hey, so it used to be the case that previous generations could leverage their skills into low-to-moderate income jobs in their 20s that they could save and use to invest in things real estate, or starting a businesses - and they could do that because wages were high enough, and expenses were low. Today, we don’t have the same options no matter how good we are with money because the average millennial owes about $30,000 in student loans, makes $35,000 a year, or $26,000 after taxes, and spends a little more than $1,000 a month on rent, which makes it mathematically impossible for the average millennial to save up enough money, for a downpayment on a house for example, because the nationwide average home costs $300,000, or closer to $500,000 if you live in a populated state, which given an average downpayment of 20% means that to buy a house by the age of 34 the average millennial needs to have saved between $60,000 and $100,000 since graduating from college.

And before you start with “actually it IS possible if you get a six-figure job as an welder and then buy a house for $100,000 in West Virginia”, yeah fine, - what I’m talking about is that the pathway to real estate or business ownership used to be doable for the average person, today you need to be very lucky, very privileged, or willing to accept significantly worse living or working conditions to accomplish the same thing. Actually more millennial households are in poverty than any other generation. So what can we do? 

Let’s put this in clear terms: baby boomers have spent the last 40 years leveraging their children’s financial futures to make themselves extremely wealthy - they bought property with low mortgage payments and then hiked up the rent to live rent free and create a passive income stream that WE’RE paying for, they created pensions to secure their retirement, and then when it was our turn, they changed pensions to 401ks, which simultaneously remove any financial obligation from their end, AND raise the value of the stocks that they invested in. They used unions created by their parent’s generation to guarantee high wages and good benefits when they entered the workforce, and then when they became business owners, they destroyed those unions, cut wages and benefits, outsourced and automated the workforce, and then used the money they saved to bribe Congress into passing tax cuts that only benefit them, and which are only possible by skyrocketing the national debt, which their children will have to pay for because they’ll be well out of the workforce by the time it becomes a problem. There’s no ambiguity or nuance here, the baby boomer generation is solely responsible for bankrupting the current generation, closing off ALL pathways to wealth accumulation, and funneling every penny of productivity that is generated by the millennial and gen z workforce upwards to create unprecedented wealth inequality, and generational poverty.