Two days ago, bilibili, a well-known domestic video barrage website, launched a short video of youth declaration called "Houlang". The film praises young people.
But do young people who are "after the waves" just need recognition and praise?
As someone commented:
The front wave only needs to say "rent increase", which can make the back wave dumb.
The helplessness of the "back wave" has long been learned from many countries and regions abroad.
We need to take that as a warning.
01 Globally, poverty among young people is becoming more common
In France, 1 in 3 people are critical of young people, and there is even a term "Tangey syndrome" to mock young people.
Because, there is a comedy called "Wu'er Tangji" in France, in which the protagonist is a 28-year-old young man named Tang Ji, who has been chewing on the old age and does not dare to leave his parents to make a living alone, so that he has become a burden to his parents.
The reason, in fact, is just one word: poor.
The United States has more detailed statistics in this regard.
According to a report by Deloitte (one of the world's four largest accounting firms), in addition to the huge gap between the poor and the rich in the United States, the gap between the rich and the poor between generations and generations is also widening.
For example, in 2016, the median actual household equity for households headed less than 35 was $11,000, compared to $224,000 for heads of household ages 65-74 and $264,000 for people over 75.
Of course, you can say that this is definitely the case, because the older you get, the longer you work, the more wealth you accumulate.
But more importantly, young people are getting poorer and poorer.
In 1992, households over the age of 75 were 9.4 times the median net worth of households under the age of 35, and by 2016, that number had risen to 24.1 times.
Moreover, young households are less resilient to risks, with net worth of young households falling by an average of 8.8 per cent per year during the financial crisis, while household wealth losses over the age of 65 were much smaller.
And between 2007 and 2010, the median actual pre-tax income of households under the age of 35 fell by an average of 3.8 percent per year, the largest of all ages, and recovered much more slowly after the crisis.
In short, it is indeed an important objective fact that young people are getting poorer than other age groups.
A study of 11 OECD countries found that between 1996 and 2006, the relative wages of young people in nine countries decreased, with only 2 increases.
In Taiwan, Japan, Malaysia, and more and more regions and countries, there are "busy poor people" and "clean poor people".
A Taiwanese female graduate student named Wu Yihua started at NT$22,000, less than 5,000 yuan, and by the time she was 28, her salary rose to NT$39,000, or more than 8,800 yuan.
She was planning events, and her father, at the age of 31, was also working as a planner, with a salary of NT$38,000, a gap of more than 20 years, but the salary was almost in place.
Relevant data show that from 2000 to 2016, the average starting salary of Taiwanese university students after graduation was NT$26,000-28,000.
And how much have prices risen during this period?
The harsh reality made her sigh:
I think that people in the past, as long as they work hard, they can make a lot of money and achieve a dream, but we simply can't do this now.
Moreover, the study also found that young people are often more likely to be unemployed.
02 More critically, how much has house prices risen?
A study by the Evergrande Research Institute led by Ren Zeping shows that from 1970 to 2017, house prices in 23 economies rose by an average of 20.6 times, an average annual increase of 6.5%.
Among them, South Africa, Spain, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Australia and other economies have increased by more than 40 times, with an average annual growth rate of 8%-10%.
Italy, Canada, France, the United States, etc., the increase is between 12-35 times, with an average annual growth rate of 5.5%-8%.
Only four countries, including Switzerland, Germany, Japan and Thailand, have grown within four times.
Among them, of course, there are effects of population growth and economic development.
But as Friedman said, "Prices are always monetary phenomena." ”
Behind the rise in house prices is a large number of over-issued currencies.
For example, in the same time period, South Africa's broad money grew 474-fold, nominal GDP increased 387-fold, but real GDP grew only 2.3-fold.
Including the US money supply also increased by 25.6 times.
But behind it is the careful care of house prices by the "visible hand" (5225012 com).
For example, UBS believes that the "super bull market" in Australian real estate is mainly due to the low interest rate policy of the RBA.
Like the subprime mortgage crisis in 2008, the real estate market bubble in the United States, Spain, Ireland and other countries burst, but the Australian government worked hard to "rescue the market", from $7,000 to $7,000 to $21,000, making the Australian property market out of the "independent market".
But what about the consequences?
According to statistics, the proportion of Australians aged 35-44 who owned a house, which was as high as 75% two or three decades ago, fell to 60% in 2017.
Buying a house and installing a home are getting higher and higher for most young people.
In the UK, too.
It has been reported that it would take 18 years for 27-30-year-olds in the UK to save money for their first home, and it would take only 3 years if it was placed in the late 1990s.
In the mid-1990s, 46% of 25-year-olds in the UK had their own home, and today that number has slipped to 20%.
Buying a house is becoming increasingly difficult for young people
Even renting is becoming more and more difficult.
Even Germany, which everyone has always admired, has seen a crazy rise in rents.
According to the survey, the monthly rent of a house in Berlin was 5.60 euros per square meter in 2008 and rose to 11.40 euros (almost equivalent to 87 yuan) in 2018, more than doubled.
In Sydney, Australia, a bedroom rent may cost $600 a week, but the average worker is only paid $700-800 a week, and after paying the rent, they can't even afford rations.
Many homeless people set up tents on Martin Square outside the RBA, and some homeless people wrote on the tents: "For many people, this is what their affordable houses in Sydney really look like." ”
And some young people in the United States simply eat and live directly in a dilapidated second-hand car, which is not only their means of transportation, but also their living room and all their wealth.
03 In reality, there are many things that make young people helpless
For example, the U.S. national debt is already approaching $25 trillion, and much of it is not for investment, for future generations to benefit, but for young people and future-born populations to bear, which often means higher taxes, lower public welfare, or higher inflation.
The economist Krugman said, "Our sin is not too much borrowing, but too little investment." ”
For example, some American researchers have pointed out that the Social Security system in the United States is actually unfair, and people born before 1938 receive more benefits than they pay taxes, while those born later tend to subsidize those in front of them.
U.S. Treasuries are a classic example of intergenerational injustice
None of this is the most intolerable thing for young people.
As Robert Putnam, a distinguished professor at Harvard University, pointed out, in the United States:
We usually don't envy the success of others, as long as people with equal talent have equal opportunities to fight for life and can climb the upward ladder of social economy equally, then we don't care how high this ladder is and how long the road is.
But the problem is precisely that there are fewer and fewer opportunities to climb the socio-economic ladder equally.
The fate of young people increasingly depends on their parents.
In Our Children, Putnam paints this scene for us:
Rich parents can send their children to private schools, or to good schools in the school district, attend various interest classes, make more children of rich families, enjoy the protection of their parents' connections, and eventually, they will have a brighter future.
Data from 2014 shows that an American high school student who comes from a top 1/4 family with economic income and parental education, and a child from a bottom 1/4 family, the former is 17 times more likely to attend a remarkable college than the latter!
Rich people are increasingly inclined to live together, eventually forming their own "circle" and passing on resources to the next generation.
In reality, young people are also increasingly dependent on their parents.
For example, in the United Kingdom, first-time buyers under the age of 35, parents and relatives and friends account for 2/3 of the total amount of the purchase price.
If a young person's parents do not have a house, he is about 60% less likely to buy a house than a young person in a family with a house. Among them, 40% of young people whose parents own a house bought their own house before the age of 30.
Moreover, the wealth of young people with parents who have a house is twice that of young people whose parents have no house around 2000, but now it has reached 3 times.
Simply put, whether young people are successful or not, one of the important factors is the financial, educational and other backgrounds of their parents.
After 04, the waves rushed, but it was not easy to get the tide
In many countries and regions, the consequences of young people's helplessness have gradually evolved into two models.
The first is the Japanese-Korean style of "Buddhism." Dead house, low desire, not married, not having children, relying on parents or doing everything in their power to maintain the most basic needs of life.
The second is Western-style resistance. Especially in the United States and France, since you can't get what you want through the right way, you can simply go to the street, smash and burn, and turn the anger in your heart into a burning flame on the square street.
At the end of the day, the ascending channel, whether wide or narrow, should always exist.
In this way, the back wave can rush forward.