Young people in US consume much more of those things you listed than people over 40 did at the same age. Young people have more purchasing power than previous generations.
EDIT: Data from the fed and payroll providers show this overwhelmingly to be the case, but just to add some color/anecdote.
I found all of the first jobs I had in highschool and just after.
3/3 of my first roles now advertise a minimum salary over twice what I was paid 14-18 years ago. Prices have gone up around 20-30% since then overall so I would have had 40% more purchasing power today with the same jobs.
A 20-30% increase in prices does not match what I've observed.
Restaurant prices are up 50-100% over the past decade. This isn't hard to check: look at old and new menu photos on yelp. Banh mi have gone from $3 to $6 in less than ten years.
My local gas station mexican place (which has excellent food) has seem a price increase of 50% since 2019 and more like 100% since 2016. Coffee ditto, but luckily I don't buy coffee out. Fast food is actually the worst offender of all, with fast food prices up more like 3-5x over ten years.
Grocery prices are similar:
Meat prices are up roughly 50% in ten years or more from my perspective. Googling, it's actually worse: chicken is up almost 100%, beef is up 45%.
To be fair, most of the current economic growth in the US in dollar terms is the result of inflationary growth and price-gouging in traditional industries. So it makes sense that basic necessities would follow the same trends and cost more.
I've seen the same effect happen like a mirror in all dollar-pegged economies I've visited since COVID.
I think you are right but the expectations of young people are up much more.
These are all relative valuations with your pears and expectations. No one cares we are all vastly more wealthy than people living a 100 years ago.
People know how much Jamie Dimon is worth. No one cares they basically have more abundance today than JP Morgan himself.
It is also the difference that when I was in my 20s I had no illusions that I was going to become Michael Jackson or a popular TV sitcom actor since I never danced, sang or acted. Now though you do have that anxiety since people your own age are famous and wealthy from nothing more than network effects.
When I was in my 20s the only people that seemed to have disposable income were drug dealers lol. It was easy to not feel anxiety that I wasn't as well off as a drug dealer.
If you look up data, you will see my observations matched by readily-available data, other than the claim about fast food prices. Fast food prices have still risen much faster than inflation, but 5x is only true if you examine the cheaper menu items and becomes more obvious when you pay attention to menu item replacements and changes.
On the other hand, your claim that prices have risen 20-30% since 14-18 years ago doesn't even hold up to BLS inflation numbers. Try 46-59%.
edit: I'm also wrong about rice. Rice commodity prices are the same as 2015, retail price is up 15%. I will say that if you don't shop at the right places, though, you're now getting gouged on the rice.
Are you taking into account the biggest drain on young people's finances, accommodation? I would be amazed if young people today had as much disposable income as they did 20 or 30 years ago.
That is because there has been tremendous stagnation in wages outside of software in the middle. Huge compression between the middle and min wage.
My first job as a cook pays basically the same as what my first processional job pays now. It was a huge win for me at the time and now would have been no raise at all.
I think this is expressed in the jump in housing prices since covid too. So young people have better purchasing power besides for the one thing everyone wants.
> I found all of the first jobs I had in highschool and just after. 3/3 of my first roles now advertise a minimum salary over twice what I was paid 14-18 years ago. Prices have gone up around 20-30% since then overall so I would have had 40% more purchasing power today with the same jobs.
If the cost per hour to say, go to the movies has tripled, but attendance has gone down by half, then by cost, more movie entertainment is being consumed than ever before, but the number of people and number of hours participating in the activity has actually gone down
The best data I could find shows a decline of around 25% from 2006 to 2023 in restaurant visits. However, a big portion of this is because of meal delivery which is more expensive than restaurants, so the cause is probably not mostly increased cost.
Other related things like concert attendance have gone up.
My take is that the main reason young people don't go out is not price, they often seem to be making choices that cost more when they avoid going out
First, young people make a lot more than they did 10 years ago (both nominally and inflation adjusted).
Second, no it does not cost 5x as much, closer to 15-20% more based on all the data I could find. Anecdotally in San Francisco, NYC, and Austin it is maybe 2x more at the most expensive places.
Drinks are like $15-20 now. 15 years ago I was getting double wells for like $2-5. Bars had actual legit specials too like dollar beers. Uber 10 years ago would be like $7 at the most.
Uber basically didn't exist 10 years ago and was insanely VC subsidized. Compare cab prices.
Drinks in some places are more, other places have not increased as much. You basically couldn't find a $5 drink in SF in 2015. You can still find $2 drinks in Austin today
The CPI is misleading because it does silly things such as counting increases in CPU speed as “getting more computing for your money.” If all you use your computer for is word processing then you’re really not getting 1000x “more computing” for your money today than you were in the 1980s, you’re getting only minor increases in productivity.
If all you use your computer for is word processing then you can buy a low-end desktop for very little money. Computers (and other consumer electronics) are cheaper now than they have ever been. Uninformed whining about hedonic adjustments in CPI is so tiresome.
How many average home computer users are 1000X more productive with a computer today than they were with a 1980s computer? The CPI is the consumer price index. It doesn’t cover business uses of computers which take more advantage of the improved performance.
No it measures CPU speed, memory, etc under the assumption that scaling these provide some kind of tangible benefit to warrant the idea that we’re getting “more computer for less money” but these benefits are clearly nowhere even close to a linear relationship with CPU speed.
Productivity was an example of a benefit I chose off the cuff but you could choose others. Are today’s video game consoles 1000X more fun than a NES? Given that many people actually prefer old NES games and are even willing to pay inflated prices to collect them suggests the answer is a resounding no.
You are getting more computer for your money. And only a tiny niche of collectors are foolish enough to waste a lot of money on old video games. You can find the same hobbyist collectors for anything: figurines, model trains, coins, etc. Collectors are economically meaningless.
The question is not: "are you getting more computer for your money?"
The question is: "are you getting (anywhere near) a linear scaling of computer for your money?"
Because to me the answer to the second question is a resounding "no" and the strongest evidence of that is all the people walking around with high-end iPhones who can barely afford rent on tiny single-bedroom apartments.
>"First, young people make a lot more than they did 10 years ago (both nominally and inflation adjusted)."
I need a source on this, like [1], and I need you to also share the cost-of-living average increases, which PLAINLY show that despite wages increasing, the increasing costs for goods and services within that same time period have outpaced wage increase percentages [2][3].
And don't be a typical HN-crowder and say ANYTHING about wages in our industries — it's white-collar work, and a functioning society sees to accomplishing an ever-progressing standard of living for members in ALL sectors of the status-quo 'bell curve'.
Shit, even average household income is down 2k from 6 years ago [4]
EDIT: the data you shared is not specific to "young people", that's why it's different. While everyone's wages are up over the last 10 years relative to prices (according to the data you shared), young people have gained much more
Rent, household items, cost of external activities, and health insurance (sometimes, see parents' insurance plans) are still subject to that group - which my sources show clear outpacing for - even with youth's increase in wages.
For someone that lives with their parents and works full time, yeah - they've probably never had it better. But a lot of youth right now have expenses drawn out in such a way where, even if they're making more than their predecessors, they have less upwards mobility for today, let alone any potential to invest in assets that afford them any upwards mobility in the future.
But what you are claiming is contradicted by the data you shared. When you weight the categories you listed by how much that age group spends, they still have more money (young people spend much much less on healthcare, you'd be shocked at how little they actually spend. You have to look at out of pocket costs, not provider charges which mostly not paid in full)
It doesn't, and you’re slicing a narrow cohort and using a generic basket. Under-25/25-34 spend a much bigger share on housing, and rents ripped; that combo compresses “real” gains even when wages tick up. If you match the cohort to the basket, the situation looks tighter for young renters. Unless you'd want to come from the position or angle that young people AREN'T renting or buying groceries that these data points support?
I don't think what you're saying is true actually, do you have data? I assume young people actually spend a smaller proportion on rent because older people spend a very large portion (65+ spend around half)
I mean partly, but it's because you’re mixing up aggregate vs within-group numbers. In this BLS table [1], the housing tenure lines do the work: 85% of under-25s rent, 58% of 25-34 rent, and only 22% of 65+ rent, while 53% of 65+ own outright. That’s exactly the exposure I’m talking about: young adults are mostly renters, so the rent surge bites them first.
You're going to have to share with me what that means. Are you using GPT to come to your conclusions? Did you read the BLS table and literally CTRL+F the data percentages I gave?
While correct, CPI-U is still an average. The spending mix of a young adult runs differently, and recent Fed work shows inflation isn’t uniform by group, with younger age groups often higher post-2021. So CPI-adjusted can still overstate how far a young renter’s paycheck goes.
I don't see how. You are engaging in a discussion about what is generally happening, meaning aggregating data is required.
If you want to have a conversation about specific people, then yes, you can find some young renter that is having problems. But that does not make it generally true.
That's because the night starts way earlier than it used to. The data is abundantly clear about that.
Back in my day you didn't even leave home for a night out before 11PM. You couldn't spend that much even if you tried before everything was closed and there was nowhere left to spend. Young people today, on the other hand, are favouring starting the night out in the early evening, even the afternoon.
A night out may cost 5x more, but the same night out doesn't.
The night started as soon as you were able to drink back then. It was college. Some bars had specials starting at 1pm. People would be there with their backpacks on still straight from class. People would get off work and immediately drink. We’d usually be drinking for at least 5 hours before we started crawling bars. On weekends we’d drink literally the entire day. We’d duct tape cases of beer to our chest and wouldn’t remove them until they were all drank or stolen from us.
> The night started as soon as you were able to drink back then.
The drinking started much earlier. Typically you'd drink at home first so that you were already drunk on cheap liquor. Sure, if you had a place nearby that had specials that could compete with the cost of drinking at home, you might opt for that instead, but there is no material difference found in that. What is key here is that people did everything they could to keep the cost down, limiting the high cost experience associated with going out to just a couple of hours before everything closed down.
The "YOLO youth" of today don't care. Some researchers have suggested that because they feel they have no future they have no qualms about spending today, but whatever the exact mechanics of are it is clear that they aren't trying to pinch pennies like previous generations did. They are almost certainly spending 5x more, but that is buying them an entirely different night out as compared to what people were accustomed to in the past. The same night out isn't 5x more expensive. Not in any way, shape, or form.
Young people in US consume much more of those things you listed than people over 40 did at the same age. Young people have more purchasing power than previous generations.
EDIT: Data from the fed and payroll providers show this overwhelmingly to be the case, but just to add some color/anecdote.
I found all of the first jobs I had in highschool and just after. 3/3 of my first roles now advertise a minimum salary over twice what I was paid 14-18 years ago. Prices have gone up around 20-30% since then overall so I would have had 40% more purchasing power today with the same jobs.