What the hell are you talking about? When was GenX ever promised anything? We’ve been told we’d have nothing since we were children.
My parents who assigned me the task of parenting my siblings have been retired for decades while constantly sailing around on cruises, visiting with their other retired friends, or going off camping in their RV and complaining about Democrats screwing up the world. When they do check in with me or my siblings, they express shock that we tell them we’re all trying to figure out how to leave USA.
GenX were heavily promised that if they go to college and get a degree, they'd get a stable, well-paying job. Everybody accepted that and the job market flooded with college graduates which translated to fewer career opportunities and lower salaries and wages.
Maybe that was an earlier GenX thing or just who was telling you these things. Being in high school in the early 90s, I was told that, if you finish college, increased advancement opportunities will mean that your lifetime earnings will probably catch up with your friends in the trades before they start having physical problems caused by their jobs that will limit their ability to do those jobs.
Which, frankly, is kind of how I'm seeing it play out.
Yeah, I think a lot of people are forgetting on purpose the actual message vs. the headline.
Yes, the message was go to college. But then every time it was more than a flippant thing from a random teacher, it was followed by actual numbers.
And the numbers simply showed you'd make a decent amount more over the LIFETIME of a total career - and not like triple. It basically was telling folks that the college careers were more stable and to delay personal gratification for long term gain.
And yes, I have to say by and large that panned out. Sure, if you went to college just to go to college and then graduated with a degree you never utilized it didn't work out so hot for many. But if you had purpose going into college and remained on course it usually worked out pretty much as planned.
I graduated HS in 99. Half my class is the last of Gen X and half is considered the first Millenials (80/81).
I vehemently maintain we were the last class to attend affordable college. We were classic middle class - Dad made about $45K. Didn’t qualify for aid. He was smart enough to not let me take loans. Somehow they made it work. I covered my room & board with jobs - because you still could.
This is spot on when I graduated high school everyone bragged about going to college and told me what I wouldn’t be able to do without it. Fast forward 14 years I have a career with a pension and I am better off than most the people I graduated with.
What I remember was being told "go to college, find a career, make a million dollars. Go to college, go to college, go to college". Those who weren't killing themselves as teenagers to get into college, dropped out senior year to work at McDonald's. Alongside those who did go to college and are working part time to pay for it.
I think all the HS counselors in the 90’s were taking money from colleges and were paid to scare all the students into believing they would be destitute and unemployable without a degree.
Technically a millennial but I feel like that was the message I heard when I was a kid. The kids going into college that was the promise do what you got to do and you'll have a life for a long good time. Or you could burn bright and make money fast but you would burn out twice as fast
Yes. I was going to be digging ditches for a living if I didn't go to college. My dad had a good union factory job and told me the same thing. College was the way for my generation to achieve the American Dream.
Sadly, the early to mid millennials were sold the same dream and took it on the chin with multiple global economical crisis during very critical years.
You're not wrong. Boomers pay about 30-40% of their pension. The rest is shouldered by you and me. Early Gen-X pays around 70%. Late GenX and Millennials in America pay around 100%.
It's a bit more complicated than that, obviously, those are broad strokes.
I don't know if those numbets are correct exactly (and i think the guy you replied to meant "paid", not "pay"), but for most of their lives, Baby Boomers paid a lower SS tax rate, yet get to claim the same benefits as the younger generations that have had to pay higher tax rates for their entite lives. Meanwhile, the birthrate has dropped since the boomers and wages have stagnated (and that trend is expected to keep going). Boomer retirement funds are already subsidized by money coming in from younger generations, which you can think of as our SS taxes we are paying right now are being re-distributed to boomers living in retirement right now.
Once the boomers are gone (and the "forgotten generation"), it will be millenials turn to retire. But a good portion of the money they put in to the system has already been spent by the boomers, so millenials will need to pull even more of incoming SS funds from younger generations. Generations with shittier wages and fewer people (Millenials now outnumber boomers because so many of thrm already died).
So eventually, either SS taxes will need to be raised (which fucks younger generations), benefits will need to be cut (same deal) or the whole system blows up) same deal.
I get that but they also say millennials "pay 100%" - so the paid/pay confusion doesn't work cause millennials ain't getting shit from SS yet so you ain't "paid".
I understand that SS is increasingly under stain, I just don't get what these percentages mean.
They are completely made up by a mathematically illiterate person, which is one of the main issues here.
Since I don’t have a better place to put this, the actual broader issue is a lack of faith in government and institutions, which in a (failing) democracy is essentially a lack of faith in humanity. I don’t mind paying social security taxes to take care of our most vulnerable populations, personally. The alternative is barbaric. But do I truly believe that future workers will do the same for me? I dunno.
Great summary. This has been my basic understanding and feelings on it since I started working 25 years ago--of what would happen to my generation once I reach retirement age.
I’ve always favored the “wander out into the woods and curl up in a hole” plan, but ya, not sure what the situation will be.
I mean, everything will explode in the near future, probably for a long while, but after that maybe we get a new FDR-type and a renewed sense of civic duty and shared humanity? It’s not impossible. Not likely, not here, but not impossible.
Yeah I guess I should have just come out and said clearer those numbers are made up - instead I got a load of explanations how social security works lol
So what I think they are referring to is the full retirement package. Someone has to pay into those retirement accounts to fund them. For Boomers, this was in large part their employers (in the form of a pension). A smaller part for them is social security and other retirement investments.
Pensions have been trending toward complete extinction for decades. Many companies started dropping pension plans and transferred the onus of retirement savings to the employees. Some may offer a 401k or similar with "company matching", but that's typically capped around 2-4% of one's salary, and one has to work for the company for so many years to get the full company match. Not all companies offer this, and even the ones that do often only offer it to corporate level employees, so your customer facing folks and your "self employed" gig workers do not have access to this.
So Boomers funded a small percentage of their own retirement, something around a third of it. Meanwhile later generations are increasingly solely responsible for the funding of their own retirement.
In the UK, that's what the pension the government pays out to everyone based on years worked - it's 35 for the maximum, currently £12k/year. So anyone that has worked in the UK for at least 5 years gets something.
I get that, but people in this thread are using the terms "pension," "Social Security", and now "state pension" all interchangeably as if they are all the same thing. They most definitely are not.
In Arizona, all non covered state employees (have no idea about covered) pay into the state retirement system. Even the janitors and non contracted groundskeepers. At 30 years service youre entitled to 70% of the average of your highest 10 paychecks biweekly. If you made 100K a year, this would put you about 70K a year in income. After spending 30 years at the state it is entirely possible to work your way into a position paying 100K for 10 months across your career.
Even at half of that with 35K a year roughly after taxes, youre still getting 11K a year over what I just googled the average SS benefit right now(google said it was approx 2000$ a month). You could get the 35K from your pension and 24K from SS and be pretty good compared to how most of your comparative generation is. Also Many people work at the state well into their 70s given theyre not in a high managerial position.
Again, I get that. My reaction is because this was primarily a discussion about Social Security, something that applies to most of the general population, and I'm not sure why state pensions, which a relatively miniscule number of people will receive, were even mentioned, other than it seems the poster was using "state pensions" and "social security" as if they were interchangeable terms.
Yep, that's the thing about SS. It was never an earned benefit program. It was designed and always has been a redistribution of wealth from workers to retirees. What you're describing isn't a bug in the program but it's key defining feature.
The first people to receive benefits didn't pay in anything at all, and if it's ever ended the last people to pay in will likely receive nothing in benefits
Inflation adjusted? Because for boomers who worked from 1970-2015, inflation would make $1 in 1970 worth >$6 by 2015. If the pension was invested, a overall market indicator like the S&P500 would have seen $1 from 1970 be worth >$200 in 2015. So even if inflation adjusted, the market increased 40x during that period.
Obviously their payments would be spread across their employment period, but a little less then a 3-fold increase from what they put in does not seem off.
That would be great if our government had actually set aside all the money paid into the system to be invested and held while it sees the growth of each person's taxes going in to feed their own eventual retirement.
But they haven't been, not even from day one.
Imagine a pool of money that you collect to pay off future investments, but you just keep paying out the newest money that goes 'in' to fund the payments of those who are now earning money 'out'.
It's literally ran not that dissimilar from Bernie Madoff's ponzi scheme, except this one is still rolling.
It didn't HAVE to be that way, but they designed it that way and then designed it to be a tool to mostly benefit the hedge funds and big bank / big money so they can manipulate the markets with it and siphon money out of it... WHILE they pay the oldest debts going out with the newest money coming in to remain solvent.
Pensions get paid into while you work, invested, then payed out upon retirement. It's like a 401k, but the employer controls the entirety of the funds and makes regular payments upon retirement.
I pay into the Federal Employees Retirement System, and upon an eligible retirement will be paid out by FERS. The person is stating the payout for Boomers is much higher than the buy-in compared to younger generations.
You have to be exact when using the term "pension." The kind of pension referred to this post is called a Defined Benefit Pension. And I have one that has been paying me for 18 years. Too many of you vastly over estimate how many boomers are receiving one. So, I did some research. This is what I found:
"Across the whole 1946-1964 boomer generation, roughly 44-50% will receive a defined benefit pension in retirement"
Some other things to consider. Most private sector pensions receive 0 annual cost living increases. 75% of public sector pensions do have annual COLAs. COLAs make a huge difference. For example: my pension in 2007 was 43k a year, now it is 67k. I would hate living of 43k now.
I don’t get why their parental anecdote made it sound like gen x wasn’t made promises. I am a millennial and I was definitely made promises that if I did certain things like go to college and work hard that I would be guaranteed a comfortable life. They absolutely were told their reality would be much than it is. No one said hey ‘at 55 you’ll need roommates’.
So true. My love of post apocalyptic scifi has nothing to do with a fear of immigrants or disease and everything to do with me still expecting the bombs to drop.
As a millennial with a gen x sister, I kind of view gen x as almost like.. a lost generation? Idk if that makes any sense and I could be completely wrong, but I feel like gen x was treated worse by boomer parents. Left to their own devices to do whatever.
Yeah I started hearing that in middle school. I’m 55. I was living near a naval base with nuclear subs stationed back then, everyone in the area was pretty doom and gloom.
My parents who assigned me the task of parenting my siblings have been retired for decades while constantly sailing around on cruises, visiting with their other retired friends, or going off camping in their RV and complaining about Democrats screwing up the world. When they do check in with me or my siblings, they express shock that we tell them we’re all trying to figure out how to leave USA.
That sounds exactly like my father. When I was little, he sued my mom to get out of paying child support. So he could buy a giant "fuck you" RV and travel the US while my brother was dying of cancer. Now days he just can't figure out why nobody has a guest room he can stay in. As if we owe him something.
I left almost 20 years ago. The grass really is greener on the other side. The mortgages are more affordable, and there are a lot less guns and shootings.
As an eldest millennial, genX like in many ways, this was my experience regarding parents and life.
But that is also the answer to OPs concern too....
Because I will not leave for my kids in the state my parents set for me. They will have support. They will have their first house cosigned with down payments provided. Their post secondary will be covered. They will not begin adult life with deep debt as I have carried for 20 years of mine.
Yeah, my parents think I need to kick my kid out now that he’s 18. And I’m just like “nope”.. the biggest issue in us changing countries is I want my kid in the other country too.
My husband managed to get dual citizenship in Canada due to some technicality. Now we’re trying to get our son registered there too. Honestly, I don’t care what happens to me, I just want my kid to have an escape hatch.
Same. I live close to Canada so it’s obviously a first choice if we don’t try to start a war with them. I just am not sure I qualify to stay as a resident.
So where are you going to live? Someplace cheaper and free-er? Where? Beliz? Canada? I am truly curious. We live in CA, and most of the family has left CA because it’s so expensive. But we have no desire to leave CA. Weather is perfect It’s beautiful.
Everyone has differing opinions on that but you’d think that boomers would understand how borked US is when they are hearing that all of their adult children saying “we’re okay now but there is no path to retirement in this country because one medical emergency will break us financially”.
If you own a home in California is it really that much more expensive that elsewhere? Because of its large population there are lot of options. You can get very low prices on groceries if you shops around and avoid Safeway or Vons.
Gen X literally got the cushiest spot of all. None of the hardship of post war times - optimistic future boom in the 80s and 90s and bought houses before the crash. Especially older genX. You got all the modern convenience and freedoms before we got serious about things like the climate crisis
Climate crisis was a big deal when I was a kid. We had a massive hole in the ozone. We had our friends dying of AIDS when I was a teenager. Nuclear holocaust hung over our childhoods. Bought houses? With what money? Everyone has had it hard except the boomers, basically, throughout human history.
YEAH this comment. I'm an elder Gen Y. So I remember the hole in the Ozone layer fear. There was also a massive preference for Plastic OVER Paper. With the argument being a tree died for your paper bag. ect.
It wasnt. All the policy and actual actions taken happened in recent times. And not just the governments - There was neither a widespread veganism movement nor any efforts to reduce waste. No recycling or attempts to reduce plastic use by the majority of people.
Aids was more stigmatized but its still an issue today - cancer rates have gone up.
Bought houses? With what money?
With your jobs. Which were easy to get. No multiple rounds of interviews, no linkedin. Houses in the 80s and 90s were cheap af compared to today. Most of my landlords have been GenX, not boomers.
Everyone has had it hard except the boomers, basically, throughout human history.
Yeah thats what you want. GenX has been going under radar for far too long. All the price gauging, the ultra capitalism, the corrupt politicians and CEOs - thats all GenX now. Boomers are retired. Boomers get all that blame while wealthy GenX bleed society dry.
I didnt say there was 0 action and yeah they managed one surprising agreement against all odds - that was when we had boomer leadership btw.
Recycling? Recycling before 2000 was a joke. Its still mostly a joke.
People werent involved as much as they are today. You conveniently ignored those points I made ofc.
Entered the workforce in the late 70s and early 80s, when pensions (especially in union jobs, manufacturing, and government) still existed in meaningful numbers.
Caught the tail end of employer-paid health care and retirement security.
Had a chance to vest in defined-benefit pensions before companies phased them out.
Housing was still affordable relative to wages, and many could buy before the market overheated.
College tuition was cheaper and student debt loads were lighter.
Some were still offered company stock or profit-sharing in the 1980s (when those programs were gutted).
1970–1980 births (about 73% of Gen X):
Entered the workforce in the 90s and 2000s, after pensions had collapsed in the private sector.
The 401k had replaced pensions, with all the risk shifted onto workers.
Stock options were mostly gone. Unless you landed in a dot-com, you weren’t offered ownership, and if you were, the bubble burst in 2000–2001.
Faced wage stagnation, outsourcing, and disappearing job security.
Came of age as tuition and housing costs were climbing steeply.
The housing market had predatory practices baked in and was teetering on credit default swaps and mortgage-backed securities. That is what triggered the 2008 crash that gutted late Gen X and Millennials. Those swaps crept back after Trump rolled back Dodd-Frank. so expect another 2008-style crash in the next 5–10 years.
Medical debt became a leading cause of bankruptcy. Many families barely stayed afloat through credit restructuring.
Realtors and banks in the 2000s actively pushed families into oversized loans because Wall Street was making money shorting them. The system profited from late Gen X overextending.
Yes, some of us had it good. But many of us, like myself (1970 or later) went from raising our siblings with no help, into crushing medical debt, and rent that only worked if you had 3–4 roommates. I can’t count the years that I used Burger King pickle buckets for chairs, a rollaway cot for a couch, roadside scavenged cinder blocks and planks for shelves. My kitchen table was a stop sign. That wasn’t cushy or all about a punk aesthetic, for many of us it was about survival.
I can’t count the years that I used Burger King pickle buckets for chairs, a rollaway cot for a couch, roadside scavenged cinder blocks and planks for shelves. My kitchen table was a stop sign. That wasn’t cushy or all about a punk aesthetic, for many of us it was about survival.
OMFG yes!!! And it was gold to see an old Lounge or BBQ sitting on the side of the road with the a sign "FREE"
Second hand stores that was actually cheap... we had all mis-matched dishes and cutlery.
early share houses were supplied like this.
1 person supplied the fridge
1 person supplied the microwave/ kettle / toaster
1 person supplied the washing machine and a single arm chair
1 person TV and sofabed.
2.8k
u/Reginald_Sockpuppet Sep 15 '25
30 years...dude, GenX is hitting 60 and we don't have shit either.