David Leonhardt, NY Times - People between the ages of 25 and 34 were earning slightly less in 2017 than people in that same age group had been in 2000:
The wealth trends look even worse. Since the century’s start, median net worth has plummeted for every age group under 55:
Why is this happening? The main reason is a lack of economic dynamism. Not as many new companies have been forming since 2000 — for reasons that experts don’t totally understand — and existing companies have been expanding at a slower rate. (The pace of job cuts has also fallen, which is why the unemployment rate has stayed low.) Rather than starting new projects, companies are sitting on big piles of cash or distributing it to their shareholders.
This loss of dynamism hurts millennials and the younger Generation Z, even as baby boomers are often doing O.K.
1 comment:
Part of the issue is that it requires the use of more stuff to grow the economy, and in an age of climate change and ecological collapse, there is just less stuff to go around and getting it from the earth is harder and harder. We are also in an age in which all the so called growth ends up in the pockets of 1% of the population, so almost everyone else is getting poorer.
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