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Comment by mdragonpkf | Hacker News Reader

Powerful post. Unfortunately no potential solutions are explored. Ideas? Is it a matter of figuring out how to shift/part wealth from the ultra wealthy of the world? Or develop a means of building wealth at lower costs? Of course limited land is still an issue. Even if you got cheap land in a remote area, you're likely to be disconnected from the world without running water, electricity, and internet.

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Affordable housing and health care is really what it comes down to. Food is as cheap, inflation-adjusted, as ever. Quality, reliable, transportation is as cheap as ever. College education is free in many places of the world, but a luxury in the US with the way it's taught. Employers are coming around to the fact that it's not a good signal any more, so the reasons to go ~50k+ in debt for a questionable degree are ceasing. The rest of millennial spend are generally luxuries. They can't afford to keep going with the conspicuous consumption and status-signalling that other generations could. But that's not what we should care about improving.

We need to start tackling the insane complexities of the US health system and the complete failure of building regulations to provide an affordable place for the next generation to live.

> College education is free in many places of the world, but a luxury in the US with the way it's taught.

Community college is extremely cheap and free in several states like Tennessee. In state tuition at most state schools will run $30k max on the remainder. Not cheap, but for the income gains...not expensive.

Thank you! The problem is huge in scope, and there are many potential solutions (with lots of smart people debating them). Land scarcity and cost is a core part of the intergenerational wealth divide. There, variants of Georgism[0] are becoming more popular, but the debate is far from settled. In some places, legislators are setting up incentives (taxation, benefits to owner-occupiers rather than landlords, etc.) to correct these market issues. Effects of such recent legislation in Germany and Vancouver, for example, appear to be productive.

Regardless, I'm just trying to draw attention to the fact that a lot of current lifestyle trends are coping mechanisms to deal with poverty, no matter how good the Instagram pictures look.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism

A traditional solution for youth who see little future has been emigration.

I sometimes think about the startup crowd of the past decade as generational traitors. They're a small number of young people who were selected by the system based on their connections to the older, wealthier generations and their willingness to do unethical things in order to maintain the status quo and secure inheritances as much as possible. Baby boomers are one of the most selfish and unethical generations and this explains why millennials are having such a tough time.

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