Why are GenZ’s mad at boomers? 🤯

[willphoenix]

Essentially we don't need minimum wage to increase, we need the cost of living to come back down.

[moonlightvampire]

$15 today would be the same as $4 in 1980. So if you were making $15/hr back then you would be making the equivalent of about $55/hr now.

[infamouscha]

I remember graduating from college and couldn’t get a decent paying job. I literally was the
“Please give me a good job, I will work hard” guy.

And I just kept getting denied for over 2 years. Every corporation I’ve worked for is trying to get the most out of you for the least amount of money, and it’s honestly pretty sickening.

[trevormorgan]

One of my coworkers, as a boomer, bought his house for $40, 000 in '89. A completely livable home for himself, his wife and their eventual two kids they'd have in the mid-90's. They put a $30, 000 expansion onto the house, and they paid that $70, 000 off in 7 years. He made $5 an hour starting, and made close to $35 an hour by the time he retired just 18 months ago. Over time, his income increased by close to 700%.

As a millennial, graduating college in 2014, I started off making $17 an hour. If my income increased by 700% over the course of time, that means I'd eventually be getting paid $119 per hour. That's NEVER going to happen... The previous generations saw affordable living ($30, 000 livable home) coupled with a healthy increase in wage over time. Sure, we make more right out of the gate than previous generations did, but we also pay out the ass for the same things that they had as well. You can't buy a $30, 000 house anymore... Heck, you can hardly buy a respectable and reliable vehicle for less than $30K right now.

I'm not saying that I NEED $119 and hour to live...but it sure would be nice for things to not be as outrageously expensive as most things seem to be anymore. I'm extremely lucky to have gotten into our house in 2017, because looking at the market now, there's no way we would make it work at the current rates. I'd also love to get a new vehicle, but it just doesn't make financially logical sense to pay these current vehicle prices either. Nothing makes sense. It's at the point now where going grocery shopping needs to be over-analyzed -- do we really need a half-gallon of milk that we likely won't use all of, or a whole loaf of bread that we might only eat half of, etc. I fear for my son who is less than a year old.... At this rate, the world is going to be completely inaccessible to him by the time he's old enough to be on his own. The next 20 years are going to be very interesting an dvery scary at the same time. And we have nobody to blame but our greedy selves. Everybody wants more money for their time, their service, their product, their expertise, their...everything. The world is absolutely F'd and Gen Z is already beginning to take it to the shins... They're getting out of college, which the professional world demands you have, and have to live in their parents basements because they have crippling debt and the world only wants to pay them $17 an hour, while rent alone today would take more than 75% of that in some places. I could keep rambling...all of this to say ultimately that we can't blame the younger generations when they are only victims of this mess, not the culprits....

[jerricho]

The problem isn't that Gen Z doesn't want to work, the problem is Gen Z doesn't want to be used, abused and exploited by corporations.

[RedBaronisa]

Big difference between “dont want to work” and “dont want to work for free”

[mrs.bigtex]

My grandmother once told me that she doesn’t see how young adults make it these days. I was shocked, I told her thank you for that. She is helping us, we’re very grateful and blessed. Now, she wouldn’t be helping us like she is if we didn’t have our daughter. And I don’t blame her for that.

[motherofnerdlings]

Minimum wage is 7 dollars and HAS BEEN for like 20 years !!!! It's fucking disgusting

[brandonlink]

My grandpa got a job as a high school dropout that paid for a brand new home and supported a wife and 2 kids. That's not even remotely possible today.

[Avaddon]

I make $27 an hour and it feels like I make minimum wage in 2024

[zabchan]

God it is so refreshing to hear the truth of the housing/wage situation from the mouth of a guy who looks exactly like the last person to tell me "kids these days dont wanna work"

[SsjDeBusk]

and their 15/hr job was a job that now requires 5+ yrs experience to enter in when they just came in with a nice outfit, signed their name and was handed a nametag.

[jimstoesz]

It's genuinely so weird to think that our parents were able to buy whole-ass houses with just their job money... Couldn't be me!

[bonnielessard]

Completely agree with this gentleman. It upsets me when I hear people of my generation demeaning young folks for “not wanting to work” when they simply want something attainable to work towards.

[AnastasiaPlantlegs]

Very nice to hear someone from the older gen say this instead of just deflecting. Im trying my best, very grateful for my family's support, but i keep getting sick every few months from burnout because I basically work 7 days a week. I have 3 jobs and I can't even move out of my parents' house yet

[Shardian]

2004 kid here. Working at walmart for $14-16/hr 5 days a week for 7 hours a day.
Rent is 95% of my paycheck out here in Virginia. To afford living here i stay with my family and pay them rent.

[Slapsofathousand]

Millennials got abandoned on this sinking ship before gen z ever came along.

[anubion]

This is why I’ve started wording it as “your labour back then was worth more”

[Qiswhattheycallme]

I'm failing to understand why it seems to be so difficult for other people to understand that all we want is to be able to live and comfortably and reasonably provide for our families

[crinna]

If a job job does not pay enough for someone to live, It's a losing venture.