How to show you know nothing of history without saying you know nothing of history
Update: On June 20, 2023 – this story is again making the rounds of the media: ‘Boomers can’t conceptualize’: This college student on TikTok says older generations don’t know about inflation, never had to fight for jobs — and the comments are in full support (yahoo.com)
This story began circulating in mid-May:
“They never had to fight for jobs.”
Nearly every claim made in this TikTok video is false.
I graduated from college in 1980 – and was then the same age as the poster of this incorrect TikTok video in 2023 – and started my first full time employment (I had worked part time since age 10 and paid for all of my own college tuition, fees and textbooks.)
In 1980, average annual pay was under $12,000
Annualized average inflation rate was 13.5% in the early 1980s
In 2023, inflation was running about 6-7% and peaked at 7% in 2021. As of mid-2023, when the Tiktok video was released, inflation had fallen to the 3-4% range.
Average mortgage rate was 11.5% (vs about 7% currently)
We bought our first home at the peak of interest rates (see chart above) which peaked near 18%. We assumed an existing mortgage + balloon payment, with a combined interest rate over 11%.
Comparing Median Home Prices Over Time – Homes got far larger
You need to be cautious when comparing average or median home prices, over time.
- In 1973, the average home was 1,660 square feet.
- In 1980, this rose to 1,740 square feet.
- By 2015, this had climbed to 2,687 square feet.
- By 2021, this had fallen to 2,273 square feet.
Our first home was 950 square feet. We added an addition that increased this to just under 1,300 square feet.
The quality of homes improved as well. Our first home had single pane, wood frame windows and bare aluminum frame windows (which conducted heat like crazy); today’s homes have dual or triple pane, typically vinyl clad aluminum windows. We had R-11 insulation in the wall; today’s homes have at least R-19. Our ceiling insulation was R-19; the home I live in today has R-60 insulation. Today’s new homes often have “structured wiring” which delivers Ethernet and television cabling to every room. The kitchen and single bathroom of our first home was 1950s era – we rebuilt it to 1980s standards. Our first home had a narrow 1-car garage and 1 car driveway; today’s homes have (at least) 2-car garages. Very few people had backyard swimming pools or hot tubs, yet those are now common in the neighborhood where we had bought our first home.
Without accounting for the size and construction differences, most price comparisons over decades are useless at best, and completely incorrect and misleading at worst.
Year over Year home price inflation was the highest at 15+%
Another chart shows of median sales price shows a large spike in 2021. This chart may be different due to being median prices of existing homes and the other, above, might be average prices, but we do not know. The values between the two charts deviate a lot – see 2008-2010, for example.
When we bought our first home, a largely ruined abandoned rental home owned by 8 out of state investors – a true fixer upper – the price of homes had gone up by roughly a factor of 4x during the prior ten years.
The impact pandemic policies had on the housing market:
US Existing Home Sales Decline Re-Accelerates As Rates Rebound | ZeroHedge
When we purchased our first home, we bought a true fixer upper that had been a rental for 8 years, owned by 8 out of state property investors. The home was a mess and had been on the market for 8 months when we bought it. The yard was so overgrown it was not possible to go from the front to the back yard via the side yards as the plant growth was 6 to 8 feet high. We rented a 30 cubic yard dumpster from the local garbage company and had it delivered to the driveway – and then filled it. We later had to get a 2nd dumpster for hauling concrete as we had to break up the original and poorly installed concrete patio (we did this by hand, using a sledge hammer and a pick).
All carpets and curtains had to be replaced (soiled by cats peeing on them), and the interior and exterior had to be painted. The bathroom was completely gutted and replaced, and the kitchen cabinets were refaced, new floor was installed in the kitchen and the living room, and a pass through was built between the kitchen and the small dining area. Skylights were added to lighten up the dark interior. The front side yard was removed, and replaced with a low water yard, and we paved concrete so we could park 2 small cars in the driveway. The single bath was completely remade.
We spent 3 years of evenings and weekends fixing up the property, inside and out, and hired a contractor to add an addition at the back of the house, adding a 2nd bath, a master bedroom, and a family room/office area.
The purchase price of the home was about 6x my annual salary, and required a 20% down payment. My wife began working as a biochemist and the total price then worked out to about 3.5x our combined salary.
In 2023, the median home price level is $413,000. As of January 2023, the median household income was about $80,000. Thus, the median home price to median incomes is just over 5, and is slightly higher than it was when we bought our first home – but our home was not the median home but an abandoned rental property selling below the prices of other homes in the area. Consequently, our home price to income level, if we’d bought a nice home instead of a fixer, would have been similar to today’s ratio.
Update: It was worse in 1984 – Americans experiencing the least affordable housing market since 1984
Job Market and Unemployment
Unemployment was almost 11% in the early 1980s, together with two back-to-back difficult recessions. This was higher than the Great Recession of 2008-2010.
1980 was roughly the peak of huge baby boom cohort born 20 years earlier when the fertility rate was almost 4. The largest cohort of new job entrants in the last 40+ years was entering the work force simultaneously – leading to demand driven inflation and high unemployment. This is what the fertility rate curve looks like – those born at the peak years around 1960 were about 20 years old and entering the labor market in 1980. To understand the impact in labor market terms, just change the X-axis labels to start at 1980 instead of 1960 …. you’ll get the idea.
This is why college enrollment began to explode during this period – everyone was competing with everyone else to look better to employers. As of 2023, many employers have dropped degree requirements.
A reality check from Business Insider
Ever since the baby boom that followed World War II, companies have enjoyed a never-ending supply of workers to tap. Hate your job? Fine — we’ll just replace you with one of the hundred others who would be happy to fill your shoes. The abundance of workers made them cheap — and disposable.
This also meant that you did not take long vacations, paid or unpaid leave or gap years. Because if you did, you just killed your employment options.
A reality check from Vox.com (Nov 2023) US economy: The jobs market is strong. Why don’t people care? – Vox
The past couple of years have been a solid stretch for workers in America. Unemployment is low. People who want to find jobs, by and large, can. Wages are up — even accounting for inflation over the past several months, and especially for people at the lower ends of the income spectrum. Workers have been able to flex their muscles, whether that means quitting their jobs or unionizing or going on strike.
Why is everyone unhappy? Much of it comes from the “culture of perpetual outrage” (which applies to both left and right). In the midst of a strong labor market, strong feelings of job security, increasing wages, robust consumer spending – TikTokers insist everything is awful. Yet they have no historical context to understand today’s life is quite good compared to the past. No matter how good things are, the culture of perpetual outrage strikes again!
Paid Leave
Per the WSJ, 70% of workers are (in 2023) eligible for paid parental leave. The average leave period for mothers is 9 weeks and 7 weeks for fathers.
I just learned that now, one of my formal employers, has a 3-month paid paternity leave policy for fathers – mother’s get an additional 2 months.
Let’s compare that to our family experience in the late 1980s, early 1990s.
When our first born was delivered via emergency c-section (her twin sister had died, and the survivor was delivered 7 1/2 weeks premature and spent 3 weeks in NICU), my employer allowed me time off, as needed. After 3 days, with my wife hospitalized for a week and our child hospitalized in NICU, I was back in the office, part-time leaving early to drive to the hospital. For our 2nd child, I left work about 4 pm to accompany my wife to the hospital, and I was back at work the next morning. For our third child, I was self-employed and took one day off.
This is good that leave policies today are more generous but please do not claim you have it worse today when that is not true.
Lifestyle Issues
Food
In the 1960s-1980s, “fruit”, most of the year, was canned peaches, frozen peaches, canned pears, canned tomatoes and so on. Vegetables were frozen or canned – most of the year.
Today, we expect to have fresh fruit (not canned, not frozen) nearly year-round. Tomatoes are available “fresh” 12 months of the year. Bananas are shipped in all year, from equatorial regions. Fresh apples are flown in from New Zealand – in the U.S. springtime/New Zealand fall.
In June of 2024, 3 of my local grocery stores had fresh “corn on the cob”, likely shipped from Mexico. Corn on the cob, not long ago, was available fresh for 2-4 weeks in August; now it’s available for 2 to 2 1/2 months. We used to have canned corn, instead.
The point here is that fresh food, 12 months of the year, costs more. In 2008, there was a media meme to “eat local” – but many saw the irony of telling people to eat fresh fruit and vegetables year-round, while simultaneously saying “eat local” – you cannot have both when winter has snow on the ground 4-7 months of the year and the growing season is short. (Note – most of the US has a 6 months growing season – exceptions are parts of CA and some southern areas that grow 10+ months of the year. People living in these areas mistakenly believe you can get local fresh fruit and vegetables year-round in the northern states – you can’t)
Luxuries Come Before Essentials
In 2023, it is reported there will be 4 million college graduates but that it will be years before they are financially independent of their parents. (That article peddles the myth that inflation is worse in 2023 than it was in the past.) Their source says more than 2 in 3 parents make financial sacrifices to benefit their adult children.
We did not have the option of parents’ support in 1980. Fortunately I was in a field and location where my skills were in demand, although I did have to apply to many jobs and many interviews and accept what I could get.
Today’s graduates:
While older generations are more likely to think that their kids should be financially independent by the time they turn 21, young adults say that’s is a good age to start paying some of their own expenses, such as card card bills and travel costs — although they believe covering health insurance, student loan bills or rent should come later, according to a report by Bankrate.com.
Amused they think they should pay their own “travel costs” – a luxury item – while essentials such as health insurance, loans and rent should be paid for by someone else!
The idea of traveling after college was non-existent for most of us – we had to be employed and self sufficient immediately. Essentials came first, and luxuries came last, if at all.
I had to pay for college myself, having worked and saved since age 10, and bought my first car, myself, as a used Toyota Corolla.
Far more “teens” worked in the past than due today (reduction might be because of mandatory higher minimum wages for the jobs teens used to take, and laws that prohibit or restrict working below age 14 or 16). Very few non-farm kids have worked since age 10. Also, because I was working, I did not participate in extracurricular activities at my junior or senior high school. (I recently looked up this data again – and as of 2024, about half as many teens hold a job as did during my teen years).
My generation had it better than our parents generation, just as today’s generation has it better than their parents’ generation. Based on history, someone born 20 years from today will have a better life than a 20 year old today – with few exceptions.
Public School Class Sizes
My schools in the 1960s and 1970s generally had 28 to 32 students per classroom, one teacher, no teacher’s aides.
Over the past 60 years, the student–teacher ratio in public schools has fallen on average, from 26-to-1 in 1961 to 16-to-1 in 2020, the Manhattan Institute reported, citing NCES data. Salaries and benefits for staff, including teachers and administrators, make up roughly 80% of school spending.
Public school enrollment declining in America’s most populous cities: Report
We did not have “parent teacher conference days” where the schools are closed for much of a week. Instead, conferences were held after 3pm on regular school days. We also had no “teacher in service days”.
Little known fact: Until the 1960s, half of U.S. adults did not have a high school diploma and had not graduated from high school.
Demographics: Educational Attainment – Coldstreams
College Expenses
I had to pay 100% of my own college education tuition and fees; my parents helped with housing. I lived at home during my first two years at college and went to a local state college before transferring to a public university. I worked from age 10 onward and was required to save at least 50% of my earnings for future college expenses; I saved almost all of my earnings.
In present day dollars, my annual tuition and fees at the local college I attended would be about $14,000 at that campus; today’s tuition and fees at list price is $20,000. However, that is the list price – per the college web site, the average student pays $8,700 per year in tuition and fees after receiving discounts, grants and scholarships. That includes a mandatory $380 per year “Health Services fee” that provides access to the college’s own Student Health services and is independent of other health insurance you may have.
The annual tuition today at the university I transferred to is now $16,587 – but if you have health insurance through your parent’s policy, the costs are $2,000 less at about $14,600/year. In fact, the average price paid by students in 2022-2023 after grants and scholarships is about $13,000/year – less than what I paid decades ago – after adjusting for inflation.
That surprised me!
Many universities have dramatically increased tuition and fees. The WSJ has a report on this issue. For many universities, prices have risen very high – and much worse at private colleges. Based on a sampling of private colleges and universities, made from those shown on Linkedin Profiles, a typical “name” private school is about $60,000 per year in tuition and another $20,000 in housing and other costs and fees – or a non-discounted list price of $80,000 per year – or $320,000 for 4 years. That is insane. Side note – a lot of Profiles show attendance at these very expensive universities for degrees that have starting pay in the $45k to $60k range without a lot of upside potential. From a financial perspective, these degrees are a bad return on investment.
But we cannot directly compare a 1980s college experience to a 2020-2030 college experience. In many cases, universities have created far nicer (some would say luxury) student housing complexes, added amenities like on site gyms and rec rooms, greatly improved food services, and modern, new buildings with standard features like high-speed networks, gaming rooms, gardens and in building retail. Unfortunately, that makes college attendance more expensive for today’s students:
The amenities include a fitness center, an art studio, a game room, a rooftop vegetable garden, balconies and retail stores on the ground floor. There’s a lounge just for students who commute via public transit and a community kitchen. But the rent comes at a hefty price, ranging from $21,695 per academic year for a studio apartment to $19,995 for a bedroom in a shared apartment. The rooms are only available for students.
UC Berkeley to open lavish $268M downtown dorm this month (sfgate.com)
Nuclear Holocaust
During much of this time in the 1950s up into the 1980s, we were under a constant threat of nuclear annihilation. This was the time of the “Cold War” – the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. had built and were expanding their nuclear arsenals. The nukes could arrive in 30-60 minutes after launch. In elementary school, we practiced bomb drills about once per month, by hiding under our desks (as effective against bombs as homemade cloth face masks were to Covid-19). All around towns there were “nuclear fallout shelter” signs marking where we should go in the event of a nuclear attack. I knew of a few homes in the neighborhood that had constructed underground bomb shelters in their backyards with a week or more of supplies stocked.
Later, a theory emerged that a nuclear bombardment would set the whole world on fire, turning day into night, leading to what was called “nuclear winter”, after which most food crops and life itself would probably die. In other words, the end of the world.
I’m sure TikToker “Cat” knew about these threats.
The Draft
Males, age 18 and up, were subject to an involuntary military draft to ship out to fight in the Vietnam War. The draft applied then – and still today – only to males and not to females.
I Had It So Easy
In addition to having worked since age 10, I had multiple untreated traumatic brain injuries. At age 5, I fell out of a tree and was knocked out – I ended up in speech therapy for about 18 months. At age 12, my bike hit a tiny pothole around a turn, while coming home from school. I was knocked out and taken to a doctor’s office. For reasons I do not understand, I was not sent to an ER but the doctor made an appointment to have my head x-rayed 5 days later. I had a 5″-inch-long skull fracture, and spent several weeks lying in bed, at home, vomiting, unable to drink water (could only have ice chips). I was unable to recognize family members. (Today, I likely would have been hospitalized for at least several days and treated with IV anti-nausea medication). I eventually returned to school half time. No one mentioned “traumatic brain injury” yet TBI issues would affect me for decades to come. In my 20s, I had two more crashes, knocked me out, broke my helmet, broke other bones, and then in my 40s, two more concussions. That’s one skull fracture plus 5 concussions. I led most of my life dealing with the effects of TBI – but unaware of what was going on because no one mentioned TBI to me. I was not diagnosed and treated until many decades after the first TBI.
I missed about two years of classes during K-12 due to the skull fracture, and then about one third of a school year due to a staph infection, influenza and pneumonia in the 9th grade, and then anotehr years due to be pushed to leave high school a year early (big mistake).
I did not graduate from high school and do not have a high school diploma.
I did go on to earn a B.S. in computer science (I paid 100% of my own tuition, fees and textbooks), and much later in life, an MBA and an MS in software engineering (also paid for by me).
As you can see, I had it really easy, unlike today’s Gen Z, where everything for them is awful.
“Boomers actually had it even worse” – The Independent
Amid the 1981 recession, typical mortgage payments as a share of median household income neared 54 per cent, about 20 per cent higher than the next-biggest spike, in 2023.
And boomers also faced the greatest unemployment rate in recent history, 10.8 per cent in 1982.
Millennials face a historically bad housing market. Boomers actually had it even worse
Many of today’s economic issues trace back to pandemic policies pushed by incompetent public health officials who attempted to micromanage the economy and everyone’s lives. They failed to curtail Covid but they managed to ruin children’s education, stifle the economy, create trillions of dollars in debt, giving way to high inflation. That’s why home prices shot up (homes are a hedge against inflation.) Guess we can call that a success? Do not underestimate the blame that belongs overwhelmingly on the shoulders of public health elite.
How Did This Happen?
Doomerism and victimhood are today huge memes on social media.
- Others see the doomerism mentality that has taken hold by people who know nothing of history: I’m fed up of hearing Gen-Z are ‘victims’ – they are the luckiest in human history
- Then this: Does Gen Z Have a Victim Mentality, or Are They Just More Aware? | Culture
Claims “boomers” could buy a house on a single income. Uh, as noted above, our first home was a trashed rental property that cost us 5x my annual income. A non-trashed property would have cost a lot more. And the ratios of price to income from then are about the same as when this was written in 2023.
TikToker Cat
Tiktoker “Cat” is devoid of facts or logic. My comments are not suggesting she is not working hard or anything like that – these comments are to show that her claims are contrary to the facts of history.
There are numerous factual and logical errors in the “analysis” done by Tiktoker Cat – yet some reporter and editor thought her nonsense was worthy of widespread media coverage. Talk about misinformation!
By late 2023, her story had been reprinted and shared widely by media outlets. This happened because it was one of those stories that tugs at emotions, even though nearly 100% was false.
How did this misinformation get shared and promoted so widely?
Because most news is written by eite 20-somethings with degrees in English Lit and creative writing (with study abroad too!) from extremely expensive elite private universities – and who are out of touch with the real world but pretend they can empathize with Cat’s proclamations: Media: Who Reports the News? – Social Panic (coldstreams.com)
As seen in the update far above, media dimwits think Cat’s comments are relevant but in reality are showing how to proclaim yourself an idiot without calling yourself an idiot.
With so many errors, she would be last choice for a new hire on a job – and perhaps that is why she thinks competing for a job is difficult right now. She is not a good candidate for jobs – and needs to look in the mirror rather than looking at her smart phone camera and sharing nonsense on TikTok.
Most of the Gen Z that I interact with is smart, hardworking and decent – and definitely not as out of touch as TikToker “Cat”. The image that Gen Z is lazy or shirking responsibilities seems to be another faux media creation, amplified by social media. The media loves to pit groups of people against one another as a form of emotional click bait.
Update: This link contains a video posted by another young person who has most of his facts wrong. In 2023, truth is whatever you believe – facts and logic no longer matter.
To summarize
In 1980:
- Inflation was much, much higher (about 2x higher)
- Unemployment was much, much higher (about 2x higher)
- Year over Year housing inflation was the highest on record at 15% (and continued high for several years)
- Housing affordability was much worse in the early 1980s.
- Today’s newer homes are about 50% larger than the homes of 1980 and 3x larger than the homes of 1950. Today’s homes have numerous improvements over homes of the 1970s/80s and before.
- Mortgage interest rates were 2 to 3x greater than today (depending on the year one bought a home)
- New job market entrants were in the largest young cohort in U.S. history, all competing for jobs with one another. Unemployment was far higher than today.
- Comparing the same colleges from then to now, college expenses are similar or even less, after adjusting for inflation if one chooses wisely.
- The threat of nuclear holocaust ending the world in the 1970s and 1980s was very real.
That Cat’s nonsense was turned into many news reports illustrates how useless journalism is.
Afterword – Why are there many “news” reports making false claims that the “baby boom” had it easy, had no inflation, had easy access to jobs and housing was cheap?
One suggestion is early carpet bombing propaganda to prepare for the next public policy initiatives.
These include having taxpayers pay off all education loan debts. One debt advocacy group wants all debts (not just education loans) to be paid off by taxpayers; this is not economically feasible.
Several government policies like Social Security and Medicare were begun with the false claim they were “trust” funds, saving for our future. In reality, they have been a pay-as-you-go scam, where today’s workers’ Social Security and Medicare fees are transferred directly to those age 65 and up. There is no longer a genuine trust fund of savings. This worked as long as each subsequent generation was larger than the preceding generation. But the U.S. fertility rate fell to 2.1 or lower in 1972/73 – and that model no longer works (as of 2024, it’s about 1.6) Yet this misconception of population growth has controlled public policies for the past 50 years! (This occurred in large part due Paul Ehrlich who wrote the book “Population Bomb” which made bold predictions for the future – essentially all of which were wrong.)
Specifically, 23% of Social Security money comes from the pre-payments into the fund, and 77% comes from current employees payroll deductions. In a few years, the pre-paid fund drops to zero, and this is when the government says it would cut Social Security payments to just 75% of that promised. This occurred because political leadership is incompetent. This issue has been well known since the 1980s but the politicians kick the can down the road.
As these funds run out of money, how will this be addressed?
One possibility is to increase taxes on the elderly – particularly those who did “the right thing” and saved and funded their own retirements. An easy way to target the older generation who saved, is to increase taxes on capital gains – as the older we get, the more likely we are to have saved a nest egg. (Simple logic explains that.)
Another is to enact wealth taxes that punish those who saved and did not pursue the niceties of life when younger. Like spending time fixing up homes, not taking vacations, driving used cars – and attending less expensive public universities.
Another proposal has been to raise the “retirement” age again. As a child, the retirement age was 65. But for me, it is 67. It is not really a retirement age but is the age at which one receives “full” Social Security benefits. There is a proposal to gradually raise this age to 69, 70 or even 72. Obviously, many will be opposed to this – France raised the retirement age from 62 to 64 and saw near continuous riots for months after this was done.
Another is to raise the payroll taxes for Medicare and Social Security; in particular, the “maximum income” on which Social Security taxes will be taken may increase.
And another is to substantially increase inbound legal immigration to keep the U.S. population growing. This is probably going to happen. Indeed, as of 2023, the majority of U.S. population growth is already from immigration. (Update: As of January 2025, 15.8% of the US population is foreign born – compared to 4.7% in 1970. An astounding 42% of the US population is either foreign born or has at least one parent that is foreign born! Compare that to 22% in 1970.)
The news reports about how hard Gen Z’s life must be- falsely claiming worse than their parents – is pre-propaganda messaging to prepare the public for addressing the demographic problems.
And yet: Media: Gen Z has it worse, but Gen Z itself says they have it better
What this comes down to is that the media is intentionally trying to pit generations against each other – emotional click bait, basically.
UPDATE
This fake story has become a news media staple and the media – and everyone else – buys it, hook, line and sinker. Here’s another one in June of 2023:
I think that in the past, it was seen as the traditional route to leave school, get a job, buy a house, and have three kids and a white picket fence. Today, however, because of economic factors like the increase in student debt and largely higher interest rates, it’s much harder for young people to buy houses than it was for my parents’ generation.
And another one in March of 2024: ‘Working my tail-end off just to get by’: This Walmart worker blasted older Americans for calling young folks lazy — blamed them for ‘creating’ the inflation crisis, ruining the economy (msn.com) – she has zero understanding of history, zero, none.
In the 1980s, we were competing with the largest new young cohort entering the job market, simultaneously, in history. There were no options but to scramble to get a job and be off our parent’s budget as fast as possible. Once employed, we worked hard to buy a home (for us, a home that had been a rental and abandoned for a year, followed by 3 years of fixing the home), assuming a loan with a blended interest rate over 11%. We had to put down more than 20% in order to assume the existing mortgages.
Today’s interest rates are HALF those of my generation in the 1980s. This info is easy to look up. But facts no longer matter in the modern world. All that matters is your feelings.
Update: A graduate who went mega-viral with a tearful reaction to her first 9-to-5 job says she’s been laid off (yahoo.com) – lucky to have worked only 40 hours per week. She responded to the push back on that: Viral TikToker Who Bemoaned Her 9-5 Says People Are Missing the Point (rollingstone.com)
With all the publicity she’s garnered she has an opportunity to become a social media influencer (she is, apparently)- and even has a background in content marketing. But per her response, she’s still having issues with the 40 hour work week.
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