Comment by llamara | Hacker News Reader

Comment by llamara | Hacker News Reader

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I think you're missing the point why younger people do that. Real wages have been deteriorating over the years. It's much more difficult to afford a house today than it was 50 years ago. People are perfectly aware that investing into index funds is the "correct" approach, however it does not solve anything for them. They're desperate and for them _to gamble_ seems like the only way to become decently rich allowing to escape the rats race, otherwise there is not much to live for, just slaving their days away. That's exactly what led to the recent situation of en masse margin calls in Korea.

Here in Europe I too have been working for years and I just don't feel like I'm earning actual money. Most of my income is eaten away by taxes and very basic living expenses. ETFs won't compound for me much if there is not a lot invested into them in the first place. This is exactly what led me to despite high electricity costs to buy 2x open source bitcoin lottery miners (NerdQaxe++) and just hope for the best.

Yes. You used to start at -1000 points and earn 5000 over your life. With investment and luck you could make that 10000 and end up at +9000.

Now you start at -9000 and earn 3000. With investment and luck you could make that 6000 and end up at -3000 so that's still a guaranteed loss. To have any hope of hitting the positives at all, you need to excessively gamble. Sure you could end up at -999999 (which is no worse than 0) but also +999999.

Yep, that's a nice illustration. Basically, if to continue steady leads to an inevitable loss, then _to gamble_ is actually a rational decision. You can see that in chess a lot: if someone is down a pawn, they have to take more risks if they need to win

Real wages are higher today than they ever have been. The whole story about median real wages falling is entirely a result of Simpson’s paradox as applied to women entering the workforce from 1970-2000. This sort of axe grinding is just excusing people’s bad decisions it isn’t grounded in reality.

How are your real wages being calculated?

By taking nominal wages and then normalizing them to some specified year’s dollars using a price index. Yes I know you believe that price indices are made up but if anything CPI overstates inflation slightly because it doesn’t properly account for substitution across goods categories (for example if the price of apples increases people will buy fewer apples and more oranges, but the CPI won’t update the weights on apples and oranges immediately). That is why the Fed uses PCE as its target index, because it more accurately adjusts for substitution elasticities.

I’m in Europe, and I have the same sentiment regarding salary. The difference is I’m more than happy with a simple life and experiences that don’t cost too much money. I have free healthcare, plenty of time for social or outdoor activities. Travels and material things are nice, but I feel like young people are forgetting it doesn’t get better than spending time with friends and family and laughing with them or enjoying nature. Whether you makes 50k a year or you are a billionaire it’s the same (not talking about genuinely poor people obviously). Driving a lambo is additional fun, but that’s hardly what makes a day interesting in itself for me, so sometimes I’m not sure what younger people obsessed with getting rich, at least in Europe, are chasing.

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