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Once upon a time – before American politicians stole the people’s money to enrich the military industrial complex and sent its young men to fight and die in endless wars, and killed its manufacturing sector by outsourcing its production to those “dirty commie countries” – America was the unrivaled “Land of Opportunity.”
Those days are gone. Fifty-four percent of Americans and 70 percent of Millennials live from one paycheck to the next, according to a survey of 28,000 households by news service PYMNTS.com and LendingClub, an online financial services firm.
About 40 percent of Baby Boomers have little to no savings, the survey found.
“Millennials — especially older ones — are collectively at important stages of their lives,” the survey report says.
“They may be starting families or taking on their first major purchases, such as homes and new vehicles, but they may also be less advanced in their careers than their older counterparts,” due to having lived through the Great Recession, 2020’s economic meltdown, and two housing crises.
Many Millennials also are toting student debt as they confront the rising cost of everything from housing to cat food.
However, “living paycheck to paycheck sometimes carries connotations of barely scraping by and of poverty,” the report notes. “The reality of a paycheck-to-paycheck lifestyle in the U.S. today is more complex.”
For example, 60 percent of Millennials earning six-figure salaries also report living paycheck to paycheck, possibly due to “lifestyle creep,” in which every salary boost is accompanied by a more lavish lifestyle.
Still, those who reported living paycheck to paycheck are largely responsible, if not frugal, in their financial lives, the survey data showed.
TREND FORECAST: This is not news to Trends Journal readers (“Buddy, Can you Spare a Dime?,” 18 February, 2020), but the ongoing financial crisis is making the situation worse.
Inflation, rising housing costs, the rising cost of advanced education, and a job market demanding increasingly specialized and sophisticated skills will leave more and more Americans falling behind financially.
Also, as we reported, the Pew Research Center found that 52 percent of young adults lived with one or both of their parents, a rate that the U.S. Census Bureau data notes is higher than any previous measurement.
As a result, Millennials – already leaning socialist politically – will turn up pressure for a more expansive social safety net and sharing of costs in education, health care, and other areas.