Salary, Housing prices | The professor’s advice to young people: – Drink more and make a bunch of bad choices

An energetic flushing bucket from an American is currently in the process of walking its victory lap on the internet.

The theme of the TED Talk is how the United States is about to destroy the future of young people.

– Let me start with a question: Do we love our children? Does that sound like a stupid question? Well, I’ll try to convince you otherwise, says NYU professor Scott Galloway, before hammering home the message that everything is going wrong for today’s youth.

And that it is the elderly’s fault.

See the entire lecture here:

Everything is more difficult for today’s young people

Historically, children have always done better than their parents. It has now turned:

– The last two generations earn less money. In addition, the cost of buying a home and education continues to skyrocket. So purchasing power, prosperity, is inversely proportional to age, says Galloway.

– Simply put: The younger you are, the more we have removed opportunities and prosperity. The social contract is no longer in place, and for the first time in American history, a 30-year-old is not doing as well as his parents did when they were 30. This is a breakdown in the basic agreement we have, and it creates anger and shame.

The result is as it should be:

– Half of people over the age of 55 have strong, good feelings about America, but only 1 in 5 under the age of 34 have the same. This creates a powder keg of various opportunistic movements with great appeal, because young people have reason to feel envy, they are pissed off and they don’t get to share in the same benefits that our generation got, he says.

Development that is done on purpose

He points out that the minimum wage in the United States is $9.50 – while it should have been $22 if it had kept up with productivity growth in recent decades.

At the same time, the large companies’ profits have shot through the roof.

– We have deliberately kept the minimum wage low. At the same time, housing prices have skyrocketed. Before the pandemic, an average loan installment was 1,100 dollars, it is now 2,300 dollars – and the average home has increased from 290,000 to 420,000 dollars.

The old have gotten better, the young worse

He places the blame on today’s adults, who, among other things, have made it extremely expensive and difficult to build new houses. Thus, they increase the value of their own homes.

– This has resulted in an enormous transfer of wealth. People over the age of 70 previously had 19 per cent of the household’s wealth. Now they have 30 percent. For those under 40, it has gone in the opposite direction.

– This transfer was intentional. While some groups, corporations and the ultra-rich continue to acquire more and more wealth, we have decided this: “If they have won gold, let us give them silver and bronze also by cutting taxes.” This has not happened by accident and it works. Senior poverty has fallen sharply, which we should applaud – but child poverty is on the rise.

He then highlights the safety net in the US:

– It would cost 11 billion dollars to expand the child allowance, but it is removed from the bills in Congress. But 135 billion extra for the national insurance (social security), it flies right through. Every year we transfer $14 trillion from the group that is doing worse to the most prosperous group in the history of the world. We have created the myth that this is a good welfare programme, but it is not. It is the largest transfer of wealth from young to old.

– More important to save the stock market

According to the professor, it was during the pandemic that it really took off.

– The major intergenerational theft took place under the guise of a virus. We thought: Let’s use the biggest health crisis of the century to really speed up the process.

There is one thing that really stands out: the government’s willingness to use public money to save the stock market.

– In the past, we have let the markets crash. You need some upheaval and disruption because it sows seeds and shifts advantages from the incumbents to the challengers. It is a natural part of the cycle. But lately we’ve been saying that “a million dead would be bad, but what would be really tragic is if we let the Nasdaq fall and people like me lose their fortunes.” So we have pumped up the economy, which in turn has increased transfers from young to old, says the professor.

Personally, he has come out of it very well:

– The two best years of my life were Covid: More time with my children, more time for Netflix – and the value of my shares went straight to heaven. And who has to pay for it? Not me. Future generations must deal with a historically high national debt.

Enormous consequential damages

Then add how social media – documented by Jonathan Haidt – has really been a crisis for children.

– This ends up in a bunch of graphs. Self-harm has exploded, especially among young girls. Teenagers with depression, and young people who do not have access to sex.

– The biggest concern of younger parents was that I would get into a lot of trouble. My biggest fear, to be honest, is that my kids won’t get into enough trouble. My advice to every single young person watching this is: Drink more and make a bunch of bad choices that might end up being good.

– I want to say it bluntly: I think Mark Zuckerberg has done more damage to the young generation in our country than anyone else, while at the same time he has received more money than any other person in history.

Do we love our children?

Towards the end of the lecture, it becomes too much for the professor. He pulls out a picture of himself and his child:

– It is this it’s about: If someone here doesn’t have children, ask someone with children: You have three worlds: Work, friends and children. But if something happens to the children, the whole world shrinks to this, he says, and clasps his hand.

– If you recognize that children are the most important thing in life, that everything we do is meaningful, but that our children’s well-being is the most important thing… If you recognize that they are worse off than previous generations, and that the sense of complexity has only hidden the transfers of prosperity from young to old, and you think we can actually fix these problems, then I ask the question again: Do we love our children?

In his lecture, he presents a wide range of measures which he believes can reverse the development, which in sum are very large. It ranges from an increased minimum wage, major changes to national insurance, tax reform – to restrictions on how long politicians can serve and some form of military service/community service.

Read also: With a normal salary, you could buy a home which today is worth 9.5 million