Young People in the Recession - The War Against Youth. Published in the April 2012 issue Twenty-five years ago young Americans had a chance. In 1984, American breadwinners who were sixty-five and over made ten times as much as those under thirty-five. The year Obama took office, older Americans made almost forty-seven times as much as the younger generation. This bleeding up of the national wealth is no accounting glitch, no anomalous negative bounce from the recent unemployment and mortgage crises, but rather the predictable outcome of thirty years of economic and social policy that has been rigged to serve the comfort and largesse of the old at the expense of the young.
Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, human potential has been consistently growing, generating greater material wealth, more education, wider opportunities — a vast and glorious liberation of human potential. In all that time, everyone, even followers of the most corrupt or most evil of ideologies, believed they were working for a better tomorrow.
Save the Rich (Official Video) by Garfunkel and Oates. Stephens: To the Class of 2012. U.S. Wealth Gap Between Young, Old Is Widest Ever. WASHINGTON — The wealth gap between younger and older Americans has stretched to the widest on record, worsened by a prolonged economic downturn that has wiped out job opportunities for young adults and saddled them with housing and college debt. The typical U.S. household headed by a person age 65 or older has a net worth 47 times greater than a household headed by someone under 35, according to an analysis of census data released Monday. While people typically accumulate assets as they age, this gap is now more than double what it was in 2005 and nearly five times the 10-to-1 disparity a quarter-century ago, after adjusting for inflation. The analysis by the Pew Research Center reflects the impact of the economic downturn, which has hit young adults particularly hard.
More are pursuing college or advanced degrees, taking on debt as they wait for the job market to recover. The median net worth of households headed by someone 65 or older was $170,494. Other findings: Online: The Generation Gap Is Back. IN a partisan country locked in a polarizing campaign, there is no shortage of much discussed divisions: religious and secular, the 99 percent and the 1 percent, red America and blue America.
But you can make a strong case that one dividing line has actually received too little attention. It’s the line between young and old. Draw it at the age of 65, 50 or 40. Wherever the line is, the people on either side of it end up looking very different, both economically and politically. The generation gap may not be a pop culture staple, as it was in the 1960s, but it is probably wider than it has been at any time since then. Throughout the 1980s and ’90s, younger and older adults voted in largely similar ways, with a majority of each supporting the winner in every presidential election. Beyond political parties, the two have different views on many of the biggest questions before the country.
Their optimism is especially striking in the context of their economic troubles. Shortly after Mr. Millennials Screwed b/c of Irresponsibity of Boomers. In 2009, Americans paid lowest tax rates in 30 years to federal government. Still, at the very moment anti-tax protesters were emerging as the most powerful force in American politics, handing Republicans landslide control of the U.S. House, the data show that people were sending the smallest portion of their income to the federal government since 1979. During Obama’s first year in office, the average tax rate paid by all households fell to 17.4 percent, down from 19.9 percent in 2007, according to the CBO. The 2009 rate was significantly lower than the previous low of 19.4 percent in 2003 and well below the 30-year average of 21 percent.
The tax burden — which includes all forms of federal levies, including income, payroll and corporate taxes — lightened for households across the board, the result in part of Obama’s signature “Making Work Pay” tax credit and other tax cuts passed as part of the 2009 economic stimulus package, the CBO said. White House spokeswoman Amy Brundage took credit for the low tax rates while acknowledging the recession’s broader toll. Millennials: The Greatest Generation or the Most Narcissistic? - Jean Twenge. Popular books have argued that today's 20-somethings are more service-oriented than any generation since World War II. But new research suggests the opposite. Supri Suharjoto/Shutterstock Reading about today's young generation is enough to give you whiplash. Many books and articles celebrate Millennials (born, roughly, 1982 to 1999) as helpful, civically oriented young people who want to save the planet.
Others argue the polar opposite, that Millennials are entitled, self-centered, and uninterested in much outside their own Facebook page. Which view is right -- are Millennials Generation We or Generation Me? The first books written about Millennials were not just positive but glowing. Millennials Rising was published in 2000, when the oldest Millennials were just 18.
In the years that followed, numerous books and news reports emphasized Millennials' desire to help others, become involved in politics and government, and work toward improving the environment. So we dug into the data. Move over Boomers! The Millennial Generation Has Occupied Wall Street. Boomers and Millennials: Who's Got It Worse in the Workplace? It’s the fight of a generation. In this corner, weighing in at 42.5 million people, with a 12.3 percent unemployment rate and $294 billion of combined student loan debt, wearing skinny jeans and headphones: 20 to 29-year-olds. And in this corner, tipping the scale at 36.9 million people, with an unemployment rate of 6.6 percent and a median household networth of $162,000, wearing Crocs and a pair of bifocals: 55 to 64-year-olds. Lets get ready to rumble. This isn’t exactly what’s happening in the jobs arena.
More accurately, generations are fighting each other from within for work. A recent report by the Government Accountability Office comes down on the side of easing the plight of older workers, more than 50 percent of whom have actively sought a job for more than half a year. Yet there’s evidence that the real jobs crisis is taking place a generation or two down the food chain. That has far-reaching consequences. To Furchtgott-Roth, at least they’re working. Mind - When Parents Are Too Toxic to Tolerate.