My (Boomer) parents made a bunch of serious and expensive mistakes, and my dad didn't properly start a career until he was almost 30. He had a high school diploma. He was literally raised in a barn (the girls got to sleep in the very-small house). My mom had a junior college degree but never worked for pay again after they got married.
He was upper-middle-management at a huge company when he was forced into retirement by the "professional" managers who had come in and filled everyone's work-days with meetings and had no fucking clue how any of the actual work got done. Between pension and savings, they were millionaires by then, back when that still kinda halfway meant something, so it was fine. I grew up with everydamnthing I could want, really.
Follow the same life course—put in the same amount of effort, make the same sorts of mistakes—today and you'll work until you can't anymore, and be destitute when you do. And probably not have a family. Assuming you don't succumb to depression and OD on opioids in your 40s, or end up in prison.
I doubt my kids will own a home. Like, ever. And they're pretty damn bright. Unless they go full off-the-grid in the middle of nowhere or something.
The future looks pretty fucking feudal.
It's definitely worse now than it was decades back.
He was upper-middle-management at a huge company when he was forced into retirement by the "professional" managers who had come in and filled everyone's work-days with meetings and had no fucking clue how any of the actual work got done. Between pension and savings, they were millionaires by then, back when that still kinda halfway meant something, so it was fine. I grew up with everydamnthing I could want, really.
Follow the same life course—put in the same amount of effort, make the same sorts of mistakes—today and you'll work until you can't anymore, and be destitute when you do. And probably not have a family. Assuming you don't succumb to depression and OD on opioids in your 40s, or end up in prison.
I doubt my kids will own a home. Like, ever. And they're pretty damn bright. Unless they go full off-the-grid in the middle of nowhere or something.
The future looks pretty fucking feudal.
It's definitely worse now than it was decades back.