Lost Generation: Painfully Familiar Truths All Millennials Can Relate To

We managed to get in touch with Reddit user u/Adahn5, one of the moderators of 'Lost Generation,' and they agreed to tell us more about this community.

"Millennials have come of age during the later stages of development of neoliberal economic reforms that began in the 1970s. Because this led to the repeal of many worker protections and social safety net policies, along with a substantially declined rate of profit compared to post-war America, millennials simply weren't able to access the kinds of benefits and security that the Keynesian economic measures created by the New Deal had originally set up for working-class people," the mod told Bored Panda.

"Their economic opportunities have been stunted out of the gate. If we study economics, we can easily see how there is a natural tendency within capitalism toward reduced profits over time for a number of reasons, and since material costs are relatively fixed because of global value chains, the ones who pay the cost are ultimately workers. Millennials, and now Gen Z, being the most recent generations, experience the worst effects in this outcome, and we can expect the same for Gen Alpha, the generation coming after them."

Millennials have adopted a somewhat global mindset, with factors such as social responsibility and the environment frequently playing a pivotal role in placing their money.

Thus, as a generation, millennials choose to follow either their instincts or go along with their peers regarding individual investment choices.

However, the distrust of financial advisors doesn't seem to apply to all of them. Investopedia's Affluent Millennial Investing Survey, for example, revealed that nearly two-thirds (65%) of the affluent millennials surveyed do, in fact, trust financial advisors.

The survey gathered information from 1,405 millennials who reported a median income of $132,000 and also found that those who consider themselves knowledgeable about investing are more than twice as likely to have a financial advisor.

Interestingly, many millennials are interested in having a personal connection with those who manage their money, despite their comfort with the use of mobile and online technology to perform many investing functions.

Considering all of that, it shouldn't come as a surprise that millennials are often characterized as conscious spenders.

Sustainability and customer service are high on the list of what they buy and how they shop. Millennials spent over $4,000 on travel in 2021, and high-net-worth millennials spent upwards of $5,000 or more. According to Expedia, millennials travel 35 days per year.

However, when they're not traveling, millennials are enjoying their food and beverages.

On average, this generation spends more on dining and shopping online than previous generations. Millennials and post-millennials spent 47% of their total food spending on dining out or take-out food, according to 2018 figures from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Their desire to indulge themselves could be explained by the uncertainty of the future we mentioned before. If you don't know what tomorrow will bring, you might as well enjoy yourself today.

But u/Adahn5 doesn't think millennials are left to deal with their problems alone. The mod of the subreddit believes different generations can actually talk and, most importantly, understand each other.

"The issue at play isn't a problem of language, the impasse is ideological," they said. "Younger generations simply can't buy into the notion that capitalism as a socio-economic system is capable of bringing them well-being or moderate prosperity.

"Working-class people, whether baby boomers or millennials, live under the same system, but the latter were able to live through a period that still maintained some of the Keynesian social-democratic reforms that made their existence much easier than it is now. Lower costs and higher access to things like higher education, homeownership, and job security make them unable to empathize, which is to say put themselves in the shoes, of millennials who don't have the same economic support systems."

Millennials are most worried about saving money, managing debt, and planning for retirement. But data shows most of them remain hopeful about their financial future.

u/Adahn5 said the reason for this optimism might lie in the support of the system. "If you read some of the philosophy behind how ideology operates, particularly from writers like Engels, Lukács, Marcuse, or Zizek, we understand that ideology isn't just in what we think or what we say, it's in the doing of it," the mod said.

"Zizek in particular has an example he likes to trot out about belief in Santa Clause. If you ask parents whether they believe or not, they'll tell you, 'No, I'm not an idiot. I'm the one who buys the presents, but I do it for the children.'"

"When you ask the children, though, you get a similar response. 'No, of course not, I'm not a dummy. I just pretend not to hurt my parents.' The extra toys probably don't hurt either."

"Neither groups believe, but the ideology sustains itself nonetheless because both continue to act as though it does. Why do millennials and Gen Z continue going to college despite the fact that they don't believe it will guarantee them a job anymore? Why do they continue thinking that homeownership is the fastest pathway to 'building generational wealth'? It's what the system has articulated for them, and what the system allows in so far as what a single person can do in this day and age as they go through life."

The moderator of 'Lost Generation' believes "the remedy to all of this won't be found in the bosom of social democracy; not when the mechanisms that pressured it into being after the Great Depression were eliminated."

"Millennials and Gen Z seem to understand this and are seeking to build up working-class political organizations, and unions, use direct action, engage in mutual aid, and reinvest their time and efforts into community organizing. The future is uncertain, but people by and large aren't giving up."

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