Billy K. Harmony

Dear small percentage of Boomers who can actually be told things: Here are some facts, to help you understand what Millennials are trying to tell you. Here is what the middle-class experience is right now. Not for losers, but for your average hardworking, but unexceptional, dude born in 1992. - No company pensions. Ever. No job offers this. - Laid off every 2 to 3 years. - No vacations. Ever. If you are lucky, you have 10 to 15 days of annual "PTO" (paid time off). But this is not vacation. This is your sick days. You can take a break with whatever's left over. - If you are not lucky, you have "unlimited" PTO. Which sounds nice, but in practice it means you get sick days and nothing else. - They pay social security taxes, but they know they will never receive those benefits, because the system will crash first. - Not promoted. Ever. - No annual raises. Instead, these are effectively pay cuts, because they don't match inflation. - Because of this, can only get a raise by changing jobs. Some judicious prevarication about salary history is recommended. - Good chance you'll have to change careers at least once, possibly more, as industries get rugpulled by offshoring or work visas. - Total mortgage cost on a median house in 2026 is 104,600 minimum-age-hours. This is 50+ years of full-time work. - For comparison, a 1972 purchase would be 23,750 minimum-wage-hours, about 11 years of full time work. What this all adds up to is that Millennials can't buy homes until they are past their child-bearing years. And, no, scrimping and saving doesn't change that equation. This is with scrimping and saving. I am not a Millennial. I am GenX, the child of Boomers. I do not need to be told how much Boomers forwent luxuries to save, and how hard they worked. I know exactly how much they did of each. I was there. I saw. They worked hard at the beginning of their careers, and lived frugally for about 5 years to save up a down payment. After that, things gradually eased up, bit by bit. Until, by retirement, a lot of them had nice fat stock portfolios and multiple rental property investments, and Caribbean cruise holidays. And this seems, to them, like a fair and natural progression. But as America has been hollowed out and by a corrupt political machine, those doing the robbing have left the Boomers whole, and placed the burden of that corruption squarely on the backs of younger generations. For Millennials, there's no light at the end of that tunnel. Just another tunnel. And another after that. They have been standing between Boomers and the reality of the modern economy for 20 years. At some point, they are going to break.