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Notes -
“Young adults are poor despite every metric which suggests otherwise” link
This is trending on Twitter so might as well discuss it here anonymously.
I know more than a few people say it’s just vibes and the data is good but I think this article makes a strong point that a real loss of social capital has actually made younger people poorer. And I believe this links into the fertility debate because the goods that you could buy before with social capital are especially needed with children. Having kids has gotten very expensive. I think everyone knows education, housing, and health care have boomed in costs. Being single means you don’t need to take on these costs. You can have kids if you are poor and live off government resources or you can have kids if you are rich but it’s a financial disaster for the upper middle class.
I largely come down to diversity (mass migration) and the Great Migration killing American social capital that the boomers had. Before these things occurred we had cheap urban housing because people weren’t afraid of their neighbors and cheap public schools. And homogenous urban environments have a lot of social capital for their residents. Also you had cheap babysitters because your neighbors were like you and you trusted them. Your kids could just go to the park alone. So childcare was free. I feel comfortable blaming diversity on rising housing costs (zoning the poor away from good communities) and for rising educational costs (falling public school quality).
So yes I think today’s generation is poorer in a lot of ways that really matter due to less social capital (but richer in other ways). And I do think the ways we are poorer today are especially bad for fertility where you now need to buy those goods in the market but they were free before.
The Funko Pop economy is booming.
They rattled off some stats on the radio about young people's spending habits. Spending over half their food costs on eating out, etc. Don't have money to save for a mortgage but instead spend profligately in ways gen x and boomers did not.
Ah, the ol' "Avocado Toast" argument again?
Now the "Doordash" argument. You can disparage it, but the math still maths.
I liked the "Sex in the City" version; it turns out Carrie Bradshaw had spent enough on shoes that if she hadn't, she would have had a down payment for her apartment. Doordash is cheaper than designer shoes, but bought more often so it's the same order of magnitude.
The underclass is gonna underclass. As if they didn't blow all their money on gambling, alcohol, and clothes back in the 1980s. The fact remains that at the mean, young people are poorer for BS reasons.
It's not the underclass using Doordash.
Using doordash is strongly anti-correlated with income, actually.
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Who do you think is taking out Klarna loans to get Taco Bell delivered? Upper middle class people?
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