Each New Gen Finds It More Difficult to Surpass the Wealth of Their Parents

In order for new generations to surpass the wealth of their parents, wouldn&#x27;t a few unlikely things all have to be true?<p>- Country GDP per capita would need to grow (relative to inflation)<p>- Income would need to be evenly distributed throughout age ranges (i.e. avoiding an increasing share over time skewing older)<p>Those are conditions we could create... but they&#x27;d take a lot of big, unpopular changes.

Take a step back and realize that in order for this statement to be not true, there would have to be the possibility of _endless_ exponential growth, which, on a single planet is technically impossible due to thermodynamic laws, regardless of how much techno-optimism copium you consume daily.<p>So yes, it&#x27;s more difficult. It was never supposed to be easier. You live in a world where wealth is tied to energy per capita, and your parents used a lot more energy than you in the 60s and the 70s.<p>P.S. Also maybe realize that wealth shouldn&#x27;t be the end all be all goal for people in general. There are multitude of things you can do without wealth and the most essential aren&#x27;t necessarily energy-intensive.

This is a huge deal. The silent generation got very wealthy rebuilding after wars. But all generations must do better than the last, otherwise pyramid schemes like &#x27;retirement&#x27; are not viable.<p>The boomers however never quite built the world as much. They needed to do much more. They left us holding tremendous debt and high taxes as they enter &#x27;retirement&#x27; but they objectively never saved enough money to make retirement viable.<p>The boomers are engaging in generational warfare, but that literally doesn&#x27;t work. As they retire right now and age, they will need productivity from younger generations. Those younger generations will get to decide how much they charge for this service. The boomers cannot stay retired for long at all. No deflation can be expected and they are hoping mass immigration is going to fix the problem?<p>As the boomers age and need more and more services, the more broke and incapable of maintaining retirement will happen.<p>There aren&#x27;t many scenarios where the boomers get to remain retired. None of them are good.

Let’s say for argument sake alone as this obviously isn’t true, say we’d reached the point that everyone was paid according to their ability, and every student received about the same education as their parents, wouldn’t the number be right around 50%? Half of kids more adept than parents, half less?<p>I’m just making the argument here that 50% seems like the ultimate goal. You can’t go up forever.

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;opportunityinsights.org&#x2F;national_trends&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;opportunityinsights.org&#x2F;national_trends&#x2F;</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;opportunityinsights.org&#x2F;paper&#x2F;the-fading-american-dream&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;opportunityinsights.org&#x2F;paper&#x2F;the-fading-american-dr...</a><p>This is the non-blogspam links that actually talks about the data. The income is inflation adjusted and has fallen to 50% which averaged over a population sounds right in an economy that isn&#x27;t rapidly expanding. The graph as presented is super confusing because time is represented in the distinct lines rather than an axis on the graph.

And yet everyone now has access to products and services not available to the richest people on earth 50 years ago: all of human knowledge, university classes, movies, music, and entertainment accessible from a small device that fits in our pocket.

The earth is full, so there&#x27;s less natural wealth available per person. Further, the Ponzi scheme of population growth is slowing down, which means fewer people younger than you are available to support your wealth. This is not a surprise.

The earth is full, so there&#x27;s less natural wealth available per person. People are living longer. Further, the Ponzi scheme of population growth is slowing down, which means fewer people younger than you are available to support your wealth. This is not a surprise.

kind of an odd metric. parents&#x27; fortunes aren&#x27;t randomly distributed. e.g. boomers parents dealt with the great depression. I think this is being measured in real dollars although it doesn&#x27;t say. But... why not just show real incomes distributions? Probably more informative.