Few milestones in life mean as much to the American Dream as owning a home. And millennials have encountered the kind of trouble totally befitting their generation, which largely graduated into the teeth of the disastrous post-2008 job market. Just as they entered peak homebuying and household formation age, housing affordability is at 40-year lows, and mortgage rates are near 40-year highs.
The anxiety this generation feels about the prospect of never owning their own home affects their entire perception of their finances and the economy, says Moody’s chief economist Mark Zandi.
“If they feel like they’re locked out of owning a home it colors their perceptions about everything else going on in their financial lives,” Zandi says.
Millennials have long been dogged by a brutal housing market. They faced not one, but two, cataclysmic economic events—the Great Financial Crisis in 2008 and the pandemic in 2020. Both of which left them reeling financially and struggling to afford a home. The Great Recession decimated the real estate market as the economy nearly collapsed under the weight of tenuous mortgage backed securities. While the pandemic brought with it a remote work boom that caused millions of citydwellers to flee to the suburbs, sending housing prices soaring.
Are we supposed to think it’s normal that millennials are the first generation in modern American history who will die younger and poorer than their parents?
On average a quarter of millennial parents’ combined income goes to childcare. That is bizarre and unprecedented. Is it normal that they have 1/10th the wealth their parents did at the same age? That very few of them will retire?
People are unhappy because their lives suck. Millennials have iPhones and cars, sure. But these are toys. They aren’t important. What’s important is family, community, access to nature, good health, education, accomplishments, creative outlets, hope for the future. Instead we have YouTube and Samsung and other distracting material garbage that all the neoliberals think amounts to anything. Ridiculous.
I think the most painful thing is how nihilistic our culture has become with just…being ok with this. Like yeah, we’re supposed to think it’s normal.
Then you look over at Zoomers and they’re gleefully making unintelligible memes about how everything is doomed. Hopelessness is their comedy. It’s sad.
Right now, we’re pissed off and want home ownership and the concept of retirement back.
Are they trying to wait us out until the younger working class isn’t even familiar with the concept? Look what happened to unions, until people finally started digging it up and bringing them back into fashion.
We must absolutely refuse to forget this, and just beshruggingly accept it as normal.
I think the most painful thing is how nihilistic our culture has become with just…being ok with this. Like yeah, we’re supposed to think it’s normal.
Boomers won’t admit to causing most of the issues and keep making things worse. When the only solution for Millennials appears to be fighting Boomers for their lives it’s no wonder many choose to just… check out mentally. It’s parental abuse on a generational scale.
A lot of what you’re talking about is discussed in Elizabeth Warren’s (now 20 year old) book The Two-Income Trap.
The central premise is that, as many middle class women entered the workforce, you would think that two working parents would be a way to get ahead in the economy, but in reality the combined incomes of two professional adults with children just became a “new floor” of sorts, for a number of reasons.
Multiple SUVs, the ubiquity (and perceived necessity) of consumer electronics, childcare costs, and emphasis on living in premium housing areas for the good schools… all good life improvements in their own right, but definitely eat into the supposed “gains” of adding a second income. Even in high income areas people ratchet their expectations and living standards up, so earning six figures each is sorta like the bare minimum. Will you have more “stuff” than a poor person? Absolutely. But that doesn’t equate to quality of life necessarily.
